Paranoid Versus Reparative Reading

Location: online

Organizers: Zsuzsanna Ihar

Guest Speaker: Nico Edwards (University of Sussex)

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s 1997 essay “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay Is About You” has been frequently cited as a foundational text of post-critique, particularly in literary and queer theory. In the essay, Sedgwick adopted the term “paranoia” to describe a mode of reading defined by suspicion, doubt , and incapacitation—a mode that she saw as widespread within academic institutions at the time. Arguably, this is still the case in contemporary universities, particularly in disciplines that focus on the many violences of past and present—be it extractivism, capitalist exploitation, environmental degradation, or the effect of enduring settler-colonial formations. Harrowing stories shared by our interlocutors, observations of suffering and distress in the field, explicit testaments and victim accounts read repeatedly can spin scholars into ever-darkening circles of grief, pessimism, and powerlessness. These feelings can block and prevent meaningful relations and further isolate academics epistemologically, emotionally, and physically. Paranoia can also paradoxically function to delegitimize one’s observations (and findings) regarding the connectedness of violent systems and structures—we often think of ourselves as too paranoid, suspicious, conspiratorial, or negative.

This workshop will provide space to explore fraught and difficult feelings, encouraging participants to reflect on things that arouse worry, fear, or reluctance. We’ll contemplate difficult findings, data, archival matter, interview material, and field experiences, thinking about necessary limitations and boundaries. We’ll think about the points at which we stop our research practice or ethnographic engagement and how to better respond to the “paranoid hunches” we might have regarding our own research topics/field sites. In the second half of the workshop, we’ll pivot to Sedgwick’s reparative mode of reading, which shifts the question away from “is a particular piece of knowledge true?” to “what does knowledge do?” As a group, we’ll read an assortment of texts and attempt to foreground the needs and knowledges of the object/subject of study. We’ll think about voice, agency, representation, and context. We’ll finish with two mind-mapping/brainstorming activities, including a compilation of alternative methods of reading, interpreting, analyzing, and writing, as well as an open discussion regarding our hopes and desires when it comes to our own scholarly work and the academic community/university more generally.

The workshop will also feature Nico Edwards (University of Sussex), who will reflect on fieldwork conducted within the military-arms sector and workshop with participants the process of conducting research in risky, fraught, or hostile environments.

In response to the workshop, Prof. Dr. Stephanie Clare (University of Washington) will give an online lecture in the evening, at 17:30, to discuss her work on feminist affect and the Anthropocene.

To sign up please email Pauline Kargruber at pauline.kargruber@rcc.lmu.de, who will provide the Zoom link.