#paranoid reading

[victoriadallonfan]

I know I’m like half a year late to recommend it, but The Sin Squad just put out a great video on how difficult it can be to find actual dog whistles and problematic material in fiction versus paranoid reading (aka gearing yourself up to find a reading to such things where they might not be intended)

I recommend it for everyone to at least give it a few minutes if your time because it’s some solid work and high quality analysis!

[pixie-stick-it-to-the-man]

Refusing to watch the world burn by engaging in reparative reading, as it turns out, can make things feel a little better.

[burningvelvet]

on cancel culture, tumblr, lit crit shit, paranoid reading, and some observations on blogging about byron & the shelleys —

every day someone comments on one of my posts about old dead writers with the most insufferable and reactionary takes disguised under a veil of liberalism. go read eve sedgwick's essay on paranoid reading & reparative reading, and learn how to enjoy things!!! why are you trying to cancel people who died 200 years ago? stop!!!

9/10 times they've never read the writer in question, they just hear that these writers were problematic and without using their own critical thinking skills, and having done zero research, they readily condemn them. no real appreciation for literature, no real appreciation for history or culture. and if they do have these, or if they have done research, it's entirely biased, already marked with judgement (aka exemplary paranoid reading).

i think it's very interesting that percy shelley and lord byron were getting cancelled in their own time period left and right, and now they still face cancellation attempts for some of the same reasons, only now more often at the hands of self-described progressives who feel they do so for the "right reasons."

a major problem in discourse (both in and outside of academia) is that most people do not understand the difference between "criticism" in the academic sense (which is synonymous with "discussion," "analysis," "engagement") and "criticism" in the colloquial sense (synonymous with "condemnation" or "harsh judgement" or even sometimes "attacking").

so when we start talking about literary criticism, some misinformed people automatically seek to cancel every dead writer, burn every book, and disregard all of history, even the progressive bits, because they simply don't care, and think that they are being "critical" and that this is a good thing, when they are using the wrong definition of the term to begin with. if i taught a class on literature the first thing i would do is make the distinction between these two definitions.

a lot of people approach dead writers or old writing in bad faith (paranoid reading). they automatically denounce The Olds for being problematic, and then proceed to believe they are morally superior for their own lack of depth.

percy shelley is one of the most progressive and forward-thinking figures of his generation and it's honestly a miracle that we still have access to some of his works which were literally burned in his own lifetime, but that his friends and most importantly his best friend, his wife mary shelley, carefully preserved during his life and long after his death even in the face of social ruin and censure, because they recognized his immense merit and they desperately loved him and his work. this is a beautiful thing!!!

this isn't the narrative a lot of people prefer, though. a lot of people would have mary shelley, instead of being the publisher and defender of his works as she was, be forced into the role which she herself openly derided, of being percy's unwilling bride, victim, who merely tolerated him, who was herself either repressed or oppressed by him. nor is nuance allowed in this narrative.

this narrative is based on a reactionary stance disguised as progressive. that all women writers are mere victims to the men around them. nevermind the fact that mary shelley's husband was one of her biggest encouragers (as well as her trusted proofreader and editor; and all this also goes for her father godwin, but to a lesser extent, as one could more easily make the argument that godwin did emotionally neglect mary).

paint all male writers as abusive control freaks, and all female writers associated with them as their weak-willed puppets, all based on their biological sex and a surface-level analysis of their biographies. these people are arguably just as bad as the sexist pseudo-scholars who have claimed that percy actually penned the entirety of frankenstein and used mary as his puppeteered pseudonym. as if mary never sought agency of her own and never possessed a modicum of it!

for a fair analysis on percy and mary's connection, i highly recommend Anna Mercer's "The Collaborative Literary Relationship of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley" and her interview by Mathelinda Nabugodi for a TLDR version.

i find it interesting that my posts about percy shelley's personal life are not only much more popular than my similar posts about byron (probably due to percy's surname; the mary/frankenstein connection) -- but also that i see way more criticism against percy than against byron.

i think this is partly due to their portrayals in the ahistorical 2018 mary shelley biopic film (see: graham henderson's blog posts on this topic) wherein byron was somehow portrayed as less of an asshole than shelley (which i never would have thought possible had i not seen it). & maybe it has to do with interest in & misconceptions about mary in general. but this is surprising because in many regards, percy really is much more likeable and progressive than byron.

i once had a person hating on byron and trying to argue with me entirely under a post about percy shelley which had nothing to do with byron. whenever i try to critically engage with this sort of backlash on my posts, it is utterly pointless. none of them are interested in or respectful of the opinions of others, nor are they receptive to facts or nuance or engaging with any material in any mature or serious way.

it's especially difficult that they mostly comment on my more popular joking posts/memes, bc that sets up a false pretense for me or my blog to be taken unseriously, when i do take academic figures & topics seriously. my blog is a place for me to unwind and joke about literature, yes, but it's not like i'm just mindlessly joking about writers i've never studied. a lot of people assume that i'm genuinely ridiculing writers when i playfully make fun of them, so they take it as an invitation to do the same, when that's not my case at all.

— back to the percy/byron comparison: in the history of my blog posts, i've seen probably 30+ percy haters and maybe 5 byron haters. as i said, this is honestly bewildering. there are way more justifiable reasons for hating byron than there are for hating shelley.

if we're speaking solely in terms of political, creative, & ideological stances between the two, (and there are hundreds of books/essays comparing their lives/works/philosophies,) i agree and disagree with both of them on various topics. they're both extremely complex writers/thinkers/figures and very different people, despite having been friends.

but if i'm comparing them biographically speaking, if i had to let one of them babysit my children, i would choose percy 10/10 times. if i had to live with one of them, i would choose percy most of the time, although either of them would be tough as a roommate for different reasons.

but overall, percy was a bit more decent biographically speaking, though that doesn't make him a superior writer (percy himself wrote numerous times that he felt byron was creatively superior to him, but morally inferior). and i think most people who've researched the two would agree that percy is the more moral poet by most standards.

for these and many other reasons, it seems apparent to me that the majority of people who hate percy are often parroting the rhetoric of others & not actually thinking for themselves -- which mary endlessly wrote that she despised, as she devoted so much of her time and energy to defending her husband's moral character from critics, so it's especially disappointing that most of the anti-percy sentiment comes from mary shelley fans, who don't even realize how much effort she put into publishing his work and transcribing it as his pre- and posthumous amanuensis.

[13lizardsinatrenchcoat]

"The powerful want to say that we are entering a dangerous new era where ‘people disliking things en masse’ has coalesced into some kind of crowdsourced [weapon], firing on arbitrary targets from orbit and vaporizing their reputations...The use of mass social sanction gives the less powerful a weapon against the more powerful, so long as they can mobilize loudly and persistently. This is not new. Shame and laughter are vital tools for freedom...

like all weapons, it will do the most damage when aimed at the least defended, the isolated, those with no one to stand up for them, publicly or privately. And we must be careful with the temptation to use it inside our own houses to destroy shapes we think are intruders.”

Isabell Fall, author of Helicopter Story, from the article How Twitter Can Ruin a life by Emily St. James

[transratsactivist]

The Danger — and Necessity — of Paranoid Reading

What is paranoid reading, and why does Twitter seem to gravitate towards it? Here are the dangers and uses of this kind of criticism.

this was a really good read. i was trying to find another article on paranoid and reparative readings and found this first.

(image description in alt text)

this part stuck with me and made me think about queerbaiting and the long history of fans being disappointed by queer representation or lack thereof. and how it's hard to trust creators won't disappoint again, because paranoid readings can function as a sort of protection from that disappointment (as also discussed in the article).

i don't have any conclusive thoughts, just: if you're a fan of anything i recommend reading this article.

[deadpoetsmusings]

Felt like now was a good time to bring this back.

From how Twitter can ruin a life by Emily VanDerWerff

And the referenced: Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; Or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Introduction is About You by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

[hoyatype]

In a world where no one need be delusional to find evidence of systemic oppression, to theorize out of anything but a paranoid critical stance has come to seem naïve, pious, or complaisant…but it seems to me a great loss when paranoid inquiry comes to seem entirely coextensive with critical theoretical inquiry rather than being viewed as one kind of…practice among other, alternative kinds.

eve kokovsky sedgwick, 'paranoid reading and reparative reading, or, you're so paranoid, you probably think this essay is about you’, in touching feeling (2003), pp. 125–6

i've been thinking a lot about paranoid reading and reparative reading this week, after emily vanderwerff's sensitive, generous critical, and uncompromising piece in vox on isabel fall, a trans woman whose first sci-fi short story led to such vicious speculation (that she wasn't really trans or a woman, that she was a troll) culminated in a twitter backlash that pushed fall to withdraw her story and stop transitioning.

i am only going to reflect on two pieces of this, which are:

it's interesting that the eagerness to denounce fall came largely from cis people who saw themselves as 'allies' (and are now, obviously, horrified they have done this to an actual trans woman!!! who could have predicted this would happen!!!)

it's symptomatic of the kind of paranoid reading that is especially present on social media cultures with a social justice bent. here, twitter's ux and twitter's culture (of responding critically and angrily, amplifying anger, amplifying outrage, raising alarm…without reading the work in question, even!) combined into a tragic outcome.

more broadly, i am very interested in critiquing an (imo) tiresome tendency to approach any work, any writer, any artist, anything with paranoid readings only.

reading anxiously and furtively worrying first and foremost about whether the writing is 'problematic' or not, whether the writer should be cancelled or not, etc…and not thinking of what can be beautiful and surreal and strange and searching about a work.

why are we so committed to paranoid reading (forestalling pain, avoiding critique for not being critical enough, avoiding cancellation, avoiding mistakes of any kind)…

at the expense of reparative reading (seeking pleasure, searching for possibility, committing to joy and hope and beauty in unexpected places, believing in the ability to read again and think again, practicing a generosity towards others that we believe they will return to us?)

i love sedgwick because she critiques the idea that paranoid readings are the only way: the only way to read, the only way to read as a critical, ethical, political being (p. 128):

[T]o practice other than paranoid forms of knowing does not, in itself, entail a denial of the reality or gravity of enmity or oppression.

which i agree with. paranoid reading is, in many ways, sensible—the world is sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic; our society is increasingly under the thrall of jeff bezos types who will degrade our environment for their own pointless, individual thrills—and yet!

isn't there something to not always being suspicious, anxious, threatened…isn't there something to reading reparatively and storing up hope and possibility? (p. 144)

Reparative motives, once they become explicit, are inadmissible in paranoid theory both because they are about pleasure (‘‘merely aesthetic’’) and because they are frankly ame- liorative (‘‘merely reformist’’). What makes pleasure and amelioration so ‘‘mere’’? Only the exclusiveness of paranoia’s faith in demystifying exposure: only its cruel and contemptuous assumption that the one thing lacking for global revolution, explosion of gender roles, or whatever, is people’s (that is, other people’s) having the painful effects of their oppression, poverty, or deludedness sufficiently exacerbated to make the pain conscious (as if otherwise it wouldn’t have been) and intolerable (as if intolerable situations were famous for generating excellent solutions).

[principleofplenitude]

Sedgwick wasn’t trying to be a shock jock. The late literary critic was the cofounder, arguably, not just of “queer theory,” but of what we now call “post-critique.” She is perhaps best known for coining the phrase “reparative reading,” a framework she came to via the ideas of psychoanalyst Melanie Klein. Klein argued that an infant cannot conceive of an external world populated by multifaceted beings; instead, they split people up into “good” and “bad” objects, assigning the person’s good qualities to the good object and their bad qualities to the bad object. Healthy psychic development, which Klein called the “depressive position,” means gradually integrating these objects into a single flawed, but actually existing, person. Reparative reading can likewise be thought of as a depressive, integrative process. In the essay, “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay is About You,” Sedgwick contrasts reparative reading with the normative academic framework, which she called “paranoid reading.” The paranoid reader might, for instance, find a text and say, “It’s homophobic.” To which a reparative reader might say, “Yes, of course, and homophobia is bad. But there are many other things also going on—and many different ways to respond.” This isn’t to say, of course, that homophobia is good. Just that most (not all!) things aren’t always exclusively wrong, and that merely saying “This is wrong” isn’t the only way to engage with a text. We also respond with distraction, arousal, irritation, mirth. When Sedgwick brought up anal eroticism to a roomful of academics, “the gasp in the room . . . of aversion, surprise, and sheer pleasure,” Berlant notes, “was delightful and unprecedented in my experience of academic performance.”

“Just because you’re paranoid” from Bookforum