| Instructor: Dr. Katalin Orban |
Preparation 10.1
Read French historian and cultural anthropologist Michel de Certeau’s (pronounce ser-toe) essay on reading, in which he compares reading to poaching on someone else’s “hunting reserve.” You can skip the last section, “Spaces for games and tricks.”
As you read the essay, I would like you to pay special attention to these problems:
- De Certeau is arguing in this text against certain perceptions of and assumptions
about reading and readers. Sometimes he refers to readers as consumers
and readers having a low place in various hierarchies. When does he stage other
(contemporary or historical) people’s perceptions and views, and when does
he convey his own views?
As you read the text, using whatever notation you
prefer, try to mark differently the views we should attribute to de Certeau
and the views we should attribute to the people whose views he is extending
or correcting. Does he make it easy for you to understand what other views
he is drawing on or trying to correct? How does the way he uses references
help or hinder you in getting a good sense of his sources?
- De Certeau’s own ideas can be divided into two groups: those describing
readers’ activities as they typically are and those referring to how these
activities should be. Similarly, there is a distinction between how readers
are seen and understood and they should be seen and understood. Can you find
examples of this distinction?
- The broader terms for de Certeau’s analysis are production and consumption, but he says that “in a society that is increasingly written,” where change takes place “on the basis of scriptural models,” the opposition of production-consumption “can often be replaced … by writing-reading” (167-8). How should we understand this argument that modern societies are writing societies? And what is de Certeau’s attitude to consumers and consumption? Why does he think consumers are misunderstood?
- What is the analogy de Certeau builds up between “producers,” the clergy, and teachers?
- De Certeau’s examples of the texts of mass consumption include television, magazines, and popular romances. His essay was written in 1974, before the extensive possibilities of reading and writing on the internet. Do you think this development fits into his way of thinking about reading as poaching or does it modify/extend his ideas?
- When you play the game American art historian and net artist Natalie Bookchin based on Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges’ short story “The Intruder,” think about what kind of reading Bookchin is doing here. In what sense is her game a reading of Borges? Does this count as reading by de Certeau’s definition? Does it go beyond reading? Is she reading against the text? Whatever she is doing, do you see it as an aesthetic response, an ethical-political response, or some combination of the two? Is the change in media significant?
- The Biblical epigraph used in both texts is from the Old Testament. Its context is David’s lament for Jonathan’s death; David and Jonathan friendship is a famous example of close and intimate male friendship in the Old Testament. “And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. And Saul took him that day, and would let him go no more home to his father's house. Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul. And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle” (1 Sam. 18:1-4). The epigraph in context is as follows: "The beauty of Israel is slain upon the high places; how are the mighty fallen! . . . I am very distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love was wonderful, passing the love of women" (2 Sam. 1:19-26).
If “passing” means “surpassing” in the original context, is this the (only) sense in the truncated quote of the two art texts? What do you think the role of this quote is in relation to the original text and in relation to Bookchin’s version?
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