Background
I studied “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading” in my literary criticism class in 2018. As I read Summa Theologica, I have been struck by something—nothing substantial enough to call ‘inspiration’, but my hand moves and an inner voice shoots off nonetheless.
I do not believe in god. If I were to interrogate this text to get something out of it, I would get nothing but what I read into it—‘this guy is full of shit, this isn’t real’. Rather, my time with Summa Theologica emphasized my suggestion that to read is to rewrite in the mind.
Summa Theologica does not answer a question, or provide me with analytical packages to build an argument. I’m reading the book both by a vague recommendation about the philosophy of love, and vague reference by Simone Weil. In other words: I don’t have a strong reason to read this book, and thus I have no expectations.
Summary
The essay introduces a book of essays on queer literary criticism. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick reflects on how the essays move away from accounts of how one should read, and instead focus on how one does read. Sedgwick recalls a discussion with a friend (and essayist in this collection) regarding the role of knowing in relation to politics—suppose we are sure that conspiracy is factual: “what would we know then that we don’t already know?” Therein is the paranoid position: entering into a text with a preconceived analytical/intellectual framework, and thus purpose.
Sedgwick provides five headings that clarify what paranoia is in this context: anticipatory, reflexive and mimetic, a strong theory, a theory of negative affects, and focused on exposure.
Paranoia is anticipatory in that it evades surprises, and goes to great lengths to do so. This is a recursive function and never really ends.
Paranoia is reflexive and mimetic in that it is teachable and learned. Mimetic isn’t necessarily a bad term here.
Paranoia is a strong theory in its wide applicability. It isn’t a weak theory, in the sense that it cannot be selective.
Paranoia is a theory of negative affects in that it promises to shield one against humiliation; which then requires the need for humiliation somewhere in the pipeline. It then produces humiliation by virtue of its function.
Paranoia is focused on exposure as the key goal is to ‘reveal’ something from a text.
Paranoia is not bad when it is employed intentionally. Analysis, for example, requires paranoid reading as there should be some level of anticipation and predefined intellectual framework.
Sedgwick ends this article by summarizing each essay. I skipped this, but I would consider reading Jeff Nunokawa’s essay.
Thoughts
I do not like the strong line drawn between paranoid and positions. When a writer presents me with a binary, I see two poles that I am supposed to constantly jump between. Am I to believe that reparative reading cannot be anticipatory? How is one supposed to read anything without a set level of information that sets an expectation? Further, am I to believe that paranoid reading evades surprises? I experience the contrary more often: I value the friction of surprise as I read something as it presents a challenge and an opportunity to struggle. The written word is good for struggle, since it isn’t real.
Instead, I consider Sedgwick’s reference to Klein’s positionality. When I read something, I flow between a paranoid and reparative position. This describes my relationship to Summa Theologica; I began reading for some reason, and when I find something worth interrogating, I do so, but I remain in the reparative position until then.
Paranoid reading and reparative reading both skim the surface of a complex body of inquiry. Though it seems contained in literature or media, people undertake these reading styles everywhere—as a trans woman, I can positively report that many approach me with their paranoid reading styles as they interpret me, which results in feeling crushed into asinine boxes which fail to acknowledge my lived experience.
Of course, I must arrive at a balance. Sometimes, I must be crushed into an asinine box in order to function in society—complex, scary machine beast that is always about to die out or explode. I must extract my perception from the things that do not actually matter to me, so that such asinine boxes do not stir me. Thus, balance between paranoid reading and reparative reading.
In my notebook, as I was thinking about this, I wrote something along the line of
I humanize everything—that which the state wants me to and does not want me to; that which the corporation wants me to and does not want me to. The ground is alive and human, as my computer is alive and human, as is software, hardware, firmware.
I wrote this to answer: how do I determine when to be paranoid and to be reparative? Answer: speak to everything as if it has interiority, and I’ll know.
Practice
Last night, I watched The Piano Teacher. Here is my reading of the film:
Erika is isolated—from herself, from her pupils, from her father, and from her mother. Her alienation causes erratic behaviour, including her warped sexual outbursts. Walter disrupts Erika’s alienation. Erika’s alienation cannot be disrupted, and so she is ripped apart as she is pulled both towards Walter and towards her alienation. The film carries out the violent motion of Erika’s movement further away from herself, due to Walter’s disruptive force. The Piano Teacher is about eros’ destructiveness when an interiority has become isolated, asexual, and celibate. It is about asexuality and solitude as much as it is about hypersexuality and desire.
The reading above differs from information about the film I gathered via online search. It seems that the film is understood as a narrative about the relationship between Erika and her mother—and a larger commentary on the pre-Oedipus stage and bond between daughter and mother. In less mature spaces, the film seems like a convenient way to project a silenced sexuality.
I view the former reading as reparative, and the latter as paranoid. I read The Piano Teacher without strong anticipation or preconceived structures (barring, perhaps, the structure of my cognition). Consequently, I struggle to land on a firm understanding of the film. I am not sure if Walter’s behaviours were genuine, so I am not sure if he is a good man or an evil one. I am not sure what Erika wanted, or if she was satisfied by the end, or if she killed herself. These are not conclusions I am willing to make. Rather, I let the dramatics enters me, and strike the surfaces of my interiority as it will.
From what I could gather, those online read The Piano Teacher with the weight of psychoanalysis pressed down on it, placing each character into predefined categories for interpretation. They appear less confused about Walter and Erika—they point to theory and social science to evidence their clarity. In a mode of organized production—of knowledge, of data, of information, of culture—one is required to crush a text between a framework and a mode of analysis. I keep thinking about pushing garlic through a garlic press.
The production of knowledge is a paranoid activity. The producer must ensure that each product has the same look and feel as the last—like a data schema, the shape of each entry is already defined, and to stray would be to render inoperable (in coding spaces, to render something potentially broken). My goal is not knowledge production. What is my goal?
Deleuze and Guatarri set up the figure of the schizo, which I clumsy use to answer. When I read The Piano Teacher, I was not looking for knowledge—societally-encoded, contributor to the larger cultural project—but instead for wisdom. I wanted to know more about myself, which in turn tells me more about everything. I wanted to identify a new egress which I could speak to. Hence, I disregard the film’s shocking scenes (of sexual perversion, of incest, of domestic abuse, of corrosive contrasts) in order to focus on what inside me opened up as I watched Erika destroy herself: distance and alienation.
My reparative reading would not stand up to scrutiny, precisely because I have not read with the goal of surviving external scrutiny. I have, as is my tendency, discarded the social component of interpretation to sit isolated with the physiological one. In both cases, one must speak to someone—either another person, or oneself. I choose oneself.
Quotes
Pg. 11; quoting A. D. Miller
The problem here is not simply that paranoia is a form of love, for—in a certain language—what is not? The problem is rather that, of all forms of love, paranoia is the most ascetic, the love that demands least from its object.
Page 22
There’s a built-in gracelessness to the expectation that any essay will end with an explanation of exactly what it is that the writer is “calling for.” (“Calling for,” as if critical practices were ready-made consumer items among which one had only to choose—“Mabel, Black Label!” Or maybe as if one were a doctor, whose expensive expertise goes into the writing of the right prescription, leaving to some commercial functionary the work of filling it as ordered.)