Conference: "For Whom Do We Read?" (Economies of Aesthetics Initiative at the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, Brown University)

We always read for. We might have forgotten it since we imagine reading as mainly silent and solitary. But think about how, in a more or less distant past, readers used to read aloud for someone who listened; think about today’s audiobooks; think about the other part of us, in us, that is lending an ear when we apparently read only for ourselves.

We always read for. In other words, there is always an addressee of reading whose place or role could be central to thinking about any politics or economies of reading. There have been many theories of reading — close reading, symptomatic reading, distant, surface, just, or reparative reading, to name just a few. Shifting the emphasis away from the face-to-face between reader and text could open or reopen, in the very act or scene of reading, a space for alterity, for futurity, for responsibility towards the other.

Free and open to the public. For questions or to request special services, accommodations, or assistance, please contact humanities-institute@brown.edu or (401) 863-6070.

Presented by the Economies of Aesthetics Initiative at the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, convened by Peter Szendy.

More information and program: https://humanities.brown.edu/events/econaesthetics/forwhom