,.....

ESSAYS FROM
THE ENGLISH INSTITUT E

Since 1944, the English Institute has presented work by distinguished

Polemic
Critica! or Uncritical
scholars in English and American literatures, foreign literatures, and
related fields. A volume of papers selected for the meeting is published
annually.

Also available in the series from Routledge:

Compassion
Lauren Berlant, editor

Time and tbe Literary

Karen Newman, Jay Clayton, and Marianne Hirsch, edicors
·¡1
edited by
Cosmopolitan Geograpbies
Vinay Dharwadker, editor
·,1
li
-~
Jane Gallop
What's Lefa ofTheory? lil
[udirh Bucler, John Guillory and Kendall Thomas, editors
' J'I
Langu.age Machines
Jeffrey Masten, Pecer Scallybrass, and Nancy J. Vickers, editors

Human, Ali Too Human

Diana Fuss, editor

Pe,fonnativity and Performance

Andrew Parker and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, editors

Borders, Boundaries, and Frames

Mae Henderson, editor

English Inside and Out

Susan Gubar and Jonathan Kamholtz, editors Routledge
New York• London

11
1\
- 1 12 Jane Gallop
'!I"""""

1
5. Ghost stories are of course a genre of popular entertainment. Although
I have been concentrating here on che laughter response (for reasons
i
' 1
perhaps of emotional preference), entertainrnent produces a variery of
sensations, induding the thrill of frighc.
6. Menands "educared people" can be connected with rhe Gelehrt in
u, critical Reading
Kant's "What Is Enlightenmerui" (see Warner and Spivak).
Michael Warner
1
1 !
1

11

I
I¡
- Scudencs who come to my li: rature classes, I find, read in ali rhe ways
they arenr supposed to. Thej dentify with characters. They fall in love
with authors. They mime w at they take to be authorized sentiment.
1 They stock themselves with 1 atería] for showing off, or for performing
class rnernbership. They sho around among taste-publics, venturing
\.
into social worlds of fanhood and geekdom. They warm with pride over
the nacional heritage. They t rill ar the exotic and take reassurance in
rhe familiar. They condemn ~ boring what they donr already recognize.
They Look for representatioru hat will remediate stigma by giving them
~ "positive self-images." They ultivate reverence and piecy. They try to
anticípate what the teacher , ants, and sometimes to one-up the other
studenrs. They grope for rhe clichés thar they are sure the text comes
= 1

Üown to. Their attention wa ders: they skim; they skip around. They
mark pages with pink and y low highlighters. They get caught up in
111

suspense. They Laugh; they c y. They get aroused (and stay quier about
t i
!
¡
it in class). They lose thernse ves in books, distracting chemselves from
everything else, especially ho mework like rhe reading I assign.
Ji
My work is cut out for me My job is to teach rhern critical reading,
bue ali these modes of their ctual reading-and one could list count-
less more-will rend to be el assified as uncrirical reading, What <loes ir
mean to teach critical readin as opposed to ali other kinds of reading?
~ Are there any other kinds th: can or should be taught?
Differem reachers mighc h: e dífferent ideas ofhow to do critical read-
!· ing, but the axis of opposiric is fundamental to our insrirutional role.
Whether we are propoundin, new criticism, deconsrruction, or cultural
il
t studies, our common enrert se is to discipline srudencs out of their
i

13

.. ,

111\llllll
)
1
14 Michael Warner
uncritical habits inro critica! reading-whatever we mean by thar,
Critical reading is the folk ideology of a leamed profession, so close to us
that we seldom feel che need ro explain ir, My own departrnenr requires
of ali entering graduare students a course called "Critica! Reading." We
donr specify anything about what will be taught in che course; how could
we? The assumption is that any of our faculcy can be trusted to convey
che general idea-and no one should be burdened with expressing it,
The Cornell English department webpage begins with what I take to
be a rypical mission statement: "The Departmenr of English teaches
analyrical and critical reading; lucid and effective writing; and srudies in
che values and problems of human experience and culture." Like most
institucional prose, chis prodamation is so careful to avoid controversy
and kulturkampfthat it wraps itself in banalicy. True, it is a consequen-
tial banalicy: because che critical profession has come to understand
itself prirnarily as ceaching "analytical and cricical reading," sorne other
1111111 justifications for the profession-nocably che task of transrnitring a
prescigious heritage or canon-have proven difficult to sustain, once
they have come to be seen as uncritical. Bue for che most part what is
striking about chis language is the apparent consensus behind ir. And
lillli, although che self-conception of che discipline seems perversely antago-
1,
nistic to aH che ways our students actually read, ir has worked quite
1~
1
well-at least rhroughout the rwenrieth century-to legitimare the pro-
==Jll fession. With very different inílections over che past century, che nor-
·~~I
a
1 l rnarive program of critical reading has allowed literature departrnents to
sell themselves as providing a basic element of education, despire a
,~ 1
widely fdt disenchantment with the idea of literature, which students in
1111
1
a technologically changing dimate increasingly encounter as archaic,
Clearly, the idea resonates far beyond our own professional dass. As we
1
never tire of demonstrating, modern Íiterature is itself full of fables of bad
reading. Dont read like Quixoce, like Emma Bovary, like Ginny Weasley.
:11111
The rich overdetermination of such fables in modernicy allows us to imag-
ine ourselves as che bearers of a heroic pedagogy, che end of which is not
the transmission of a canon or the carechistic incorporation of faces and
pieties, but an open future of personal and collective Iiberation, of ful] cir-
iz.enship and historical belonging. To quote another revealingly bland
rallying cry: "Critical literacy means making one's self presem as part of a
moral and political projecr that links rhe production of meaning to che
-- -
Uncritical Reading 15
possibility for human agency, dernocraric communiry, and rransformative
social action."1 We are here, we like to tell our srudents, to save you from
habirs of uncritical reading thar are naive, imrnature, unexamined-or
worse. Donr read like children, like vacation readers on the beach, like
escapists, like fundamencalists, like nationalists, like antiquarians, like
~
consumers, like ideologues, like sexists, like tourists, like yourselves.
Critical reading is evidendy dense with social meaning; bur its sig-
nificance for modernicy seems difficult ro pin on any empirically
describable pracrice of reading. Why is ir apparenrly che case that any
style of actual reading that we can observe in che world counrs as
uncritical? And how could it neverrheless seern that professors of liter-
ature regard rhe critica! artitude as a necessary implication of reading
itself? A suspicion begins to suggest itself Is critical reading really read-
ing at all? Is it an ideological description applied to people who are
properly socialized into a political culture, regardless of how (or
whether) they read? Or, graming a Iittle more in charicy: Is ir not so
much a reading practice as a nocional derivative from a prior, uncriri-
cal reading thar it must posit in order to exist? Is ita style of rereading,
or discourse about reading, rather than reading per se?2 Does ir narne
che kind of liberal openness to self-questioning and reflecrive explicita-
tion that could theoretically take any practice of reading as its occasion?
Or is it more like a discipline, seeking ro replace the raw and untrained
practices of che merely literate with a cultivated and habitual disposi-
tion to read by means of another set of practices? If so, can rhose styles
of reading be anatomized, or placed in a history of textual practice? If
rhe latter, is this reading culture one of the formal-historical conditions
of what counrs as crirical reason? A hernie pedagogy can be founded on
textual techniques because of an imputed relationship between the
practice of reading and critical reason, bue what is rhat relarionship?
The enormous shadow of uncritical readíng suggests another sec of
problems as well. Within che culture of critical reading it can seem that
ali che forms of uncrirical reading-identification, self-forgetfulness,
reverie, sentimentaliry, enthusiasrn, literalism, aversion, distraction-are
unsysternaric and disorganized. Uncrirical modes of reading, it would
seem, are by definirion neither reflective nor analytic. They muse there-
fore prove untenable-e-i.e., transmute into the material of crirical read-
! ing-when summoned ro the bar of examinarion, Uncritical reading, it
11•
-·- ~
 16 Michael Warner
would seem, is naive; by its nature it cannot attain che coherence of a
normative program of reading. Ir cannot constiture a real rival co what is
called cricical reading. Hence che ready consensus: If che choice is
becween critical and uncritical reading, who could be for che latter?
But what if it isnt true, as we suppose, that critical reading is the only
way to suture textual praccice wich reflection, reason, and a normacive
discipline of subjecciviryr If we begin to underscand critica! reading not
simply as che coming-into-reñexiviry of reading, bue as a very special set
of form relationships, then ir mighc be easier to recognize rival modes of
readíng and reflection on reading as someching other chan prerheoreti-
cally uncritical. The mosc obvious candidares for such a program of
"uncricical" reading are various sryles of religious reading, bue they are
illl 1 not the only ones. (An interesting point of cornparison would be porno-
1
graphic reading, which becomes a developed and familiar pracrice in che
period of critical reading's ascendancy.)3
We tend to assume that critical reading is just a name for any self-con-
scious practice of reading, This assumption creares severa! kinds of fall-
out at once: le rurns ali reading into che uncritical material for an
ever-receding horizon of reflective self-positing; by naturalizing critica!
reading as mere reílection ic obscures from even our own view che rather
elaborare forms and disciplines of subjectiviry we practice and inculcare;
it universalizes che specíal form of modemicy thac unites philology wich
the public sphere; and it blocks from view the existence of other cultures
of textualisrn. In these ways ir could be called a misrake oran ideology,
1~1111
bue of course ir is also che interna] viewpoinr of a culture with its own
productive inrensities, irs own distinctive paradoxes, enabling even this
1111'¡ 1 essay, for berter or worse.
Among the critics who have noriced che irnporrance of whac is usu-
I' 1
ally left unchoughc as uncritical reading is Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. In a
,111 I
suggescive polemical essay published as the introduction co Novel-
111 r Gazing; she argues rhat the dominant modes of academic criticism have
[ drifted inco an essentially paran o id suspicion of textual atrachrnenr, 4
Sedgwick's polemic targecs a specific set of academic movernents; bue I
suspect that rnost of what she excoriares as paranoid could be described
as an extreme case in which norms of che critica! have hypertrophied
and become conspicuous. For reasons that might be various-such as
the cornpetitive posicioning of professional discourse, which invites us
Uncritical Reading 17
to ensure chac our own cricical reflections will be more critical than
those of our anticipared, imaginary critics-e-rhe criric adopts a projec-
tively aggressive defensiveness in relation to che object of cricicism.
Sedgwick identifies as che basic elements of paran o id reading (1) an
anticipatory aversion to surprise, taken as the only securicy of knowl-
edge; (2) a mirnetic reflexivity in which che cricic is seen as making
explicit a larent or hidden reflexiviry in che texr; (3) a strong insiscence
on seeing everyrhing in the terms of its central suspicions; (4) an inter-
esr only in negative affeccs; and (5) an apparently boundless faich in che
efficacy of exposure. Ali of these can be seen as heightened versions of
one or another norrnarive project of rhe critica! per se, though che
degree of exaggeration is more visible in sorne, such as (4). The first, an
anxiously anticiparory knowingness, is often hard to distinguish in prac-
cice from ordinary crirical distance--at least when distanciation is taken
as che necessary rouce to knowledge rhat is threatened by atrachmenr,
incorporation, or involvement, and where the object of analysis is cred-
ited wich sorne anticipation of che critics arternpt to get disrance on it.
The second, an eliciring of a Íatent reflexivity artributed ro the objecr,
is a clase cousin of a Romanric critica! assumption I will recurn to later
in connection with an observacion by Walcer Benjamín. The last, a faith
in criticism as an act of exposure or demystification, is an anide of
faich in public-sphere forms, related ro whar I 'have elsewhere called a
principie of supervisión. In paranoid criticisrn it has become an imagi-
nary and unmediated exposure, a power of mere knowingness. This
faich in exposure is often implicit in what goes by the name critique.
In making her polemic againsr critica! criticisrn, Sedgwick also seeks
to articulare, legitimate, and promote a loose array of alcernative com-
mentary forms among queer acadernics, which she groups under che
name "reparative reading." Reparative reading scyles in her view have
in common a rhetoric of attachrnenr, investrnent, and fantasy about
their textual occasions, For Sedgwick, chese represent ways of reading
rhar have been avoided or stigrnatized as uncrirical. They are certainly
not preoccupied wich crirical distance coward their interprerive objeccs.
Bur is reparative reading a structured program of reading or explica-
tion? For che most part Sedgwick describes ir as local, detailed, and
unsyscematized. Even rhe patterns she singles out have rhis partial char-
acter, such as a willingness to describe fragmencs or passages wirhout a
 18 Michael Warner
total schemacization of the text. For this reason, Sedgwick's reparative
1 ,J:
reading seerns to be defined less by any project of its own chan by irs
recoil from a manically programmatic inrensification of the critical. le
is nor so much a method as (principled?) avoidance of method.
A rather different picture of critica] reading and its uncritical other
can be glimpsed in che work of anthropologist Saba Mahmood, even
though Mahmood is not especiaUy concerned wirh texts. Where
Sedgwick sees an exaggerated criticism being countered by parcial proj-
ects of attachment and reverie, Mahmood in a very different context
draws a contrasr berween a critical erhic and another, rival system,
often deemed uncritical, but equally organized and methodized as an
ethical project. In a searching analysis of the wornen's mosque rnove-
rnent in Egypc, Mahmood shows its practica! and ethical matrix is sys-
rematically misrecognized by feminists for whom che pursuit of
autonornized agency through critica] reflection is taken to be the only
legicimate form of subjecriviry; Mahmood works wich women who
aspire to be "slaves of God." Thís apparent abnegation of agency in fact
turns out to be pursued by an elaborare program of reflection, ritual
practice, mutual correcrion, commentary, reasoning, habit-forrnation,
and corporeal discipline-in shorr, a cultivarion of piecy. Mahmood
argues that piety in this context cannot be seen as an uncritical atti-
cude, or a survival of premodern tradition, or passivicy, or unreflective
conformity; ir must racher be seen asan ethical project (where "erhical"
is understood in rhe terms of che later Foucault) thar has as irs end a
particular conception of che human being. This conception is funda-
rnenrally incommensurable with that of crirical citizenship. And here
Mahmood draws a further conclusion. It is not enough to do a critique
or critical reading of che piety rnovement, for chis leaves unquescioned
precisely what is at stake: namely, the way che enframing of knowledge
as critica! presupposes a project for being a certain kind of person. The
standard of che critical, Mahmood suggescs, could and should be
parochialized in rurn as an ethícal discipline of subjectivíry rather chan
as the transparent medium of knowledge. 5
-How could we extend Mahrnood's insight about rhe critical to an
understanding of cricical reading and its relarion to other, putatively
uncritical modes of reading? Mahmood <loes not herself analyze che
illlli
textual arts. Bur she does note as germane to her analysis that rhe
1f
''111
1f'
1:
Uncritical Reading 19
pietists' preference for recitation as a rnediation of Quranic text has to
do with the cuitivation of a dilated cemporalicy to interrupt mundane
time and reframe daily routine, Recitation and audition, in other
words, are taken in chis context to be techniques orares for che incul-
catión of virtuous habits-noc as a putatively primordial "orality" thar
would be rhe residual ocher of Iireracy, The irnportant point in
Mahmood's analysis, though, is not justa different techníque of text-
processing, ora different arritude about che text objecr.ibut a different
kind of subject ro which the technique is oriented.
Critical reading and uncritical reading, in this analysis, would need
to be distinguished nor so much on che basis of different technical
mechods, nor as reflecrive and unreflecrive versions of che mere pro-
cessing of text artifacts, but as comrasting ways in which various tech-
niques and forms can be embedded in an ethical problematic of
subject-formation-in che case of critical reading, one oriented to free-
dom and auronornous agency against the background of a modern
socialimaginary, In.the contrast between critica! liberal secularism and
che piety of che mosque movemenc, che difference can be very deep
indeed, in a way made newly salient by rhe current polirical climace.
But where cultures of texmalism and their ethical projects are not
thrown into such vivid contrast by che context of englobing struggles,
it might be easy to miss the nuances by which reading practices are
embedded within and organized by ethical projecrs for cultivating one
kind of person or anocher. The broad- contrast Mahmood draws
berween secular criticisrn and a specific rradition of Islamic piety, in
orher words, might be only che beginning, leading us to recognize that
a great variecy of texr practices and ethical projecrs have been consoli-
daced as, or assimilated to, che picture of critical reading-with every-
thing else being lefr unthought as uncrirical.
To pose che problem of critical and uncritical reading in chis way is to
ask new questions about what councs as critical, what ir might be shorr-
hand- for, what disrinct projects might be caught up in the tar of the
uncritical, and how different echical orientations rnight inflect differenc
ares of commentary or practices of texr-objecrification and rexr-realiza-
tion. This of course is a vast projecr, It is nor my inrention to undertake
it here in any thorough way. I can neither give a full analysis of the kinds
of agency and subjectiviry thar have at various poincs been dassed as cric-
 20 Michael Warner
ical or uncritical, nor show in detail how they have been correlated with
different textual arts. Bue I can try to suggest sorne ways that these ques-
rions can reframe existing scholarship in the history and theory of read-
·j' ing. In the remainder of chis essay I revisit sorne of the main topoi in
!
recent studies of the history of reading in order to pose, rather than
answer, this question: how have various arts of commentary and practices
of text-rendering come to be linked to the erhical projects organized on
che axis of the critical and the uncritical? And what rnight we see in this
history if we did not take critical reading as an invisible norm?
II
Surprisingly, given the volume of recent scholarship on che history of
reading, I have found no history of the prococols and norms for a disci-
pline of critica! reading as such. Maybe this should not be surprising.
Since literary critics tend to think of critical reading as the necessary form
of any self-conscious reading, they seldom imagine it as the kind of prac-
tice that might have-as I think it does-a history, an intergeneric
matrix of forms, a discipline. Histories of reading have been dominated
either by inquiries into the material forms of texrs or by the sorc of sim-
ple classifications that can be made by outside observers without refer-
ence to the normative orienrations of readers (e.g., "extensive" versus
"inrensive" reading, silent or vocalized, erc.). It is nor immediately dear
how a history of what counts as critica! reading might be imagined, or
whac alternative reading disciplines might be misrecognized as uncritical.
Thanks to the energies of sorne very inventive historians of the
book, however, there is a large literature that mighr be related to.this
topic. These historians have produced a new paradigm in which
reading is understood as a highly variable practice, intimately relat-
ed to the material organization of texrs. They have denaturalized
many of our assumptions about what ir meaos to read. And this is
essential in grasping what critical or uncritical reading could mean,
since the mental image of critica! reading seerns to require at mini-
mum a clear opposition becween the text object and the reading sub-
ject-indeed, critica] reading could be thought of as an ideal for
maximizing, that polarity, defining the reader's freedom and agency
as an expression of distance from a text that must be objectified as a
benchmark of distanciation.
Uncritical Reading 21
This is precisely rhe sort of assurnption about what texts are and how
readers approach them (including this idea that texts are objects thar
readers "approach") that the new historians of reading dispute. They
have shown rhar centuries of innovations in the formalization of easily
navigable texts lie behind such a picture. Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger
Chartier, in their survey of the new histories of reading, note that there
is evidence from as early as the fourth or even fifch centuries BCE of "a
reading style capable of reading 'through' a text and permirting atten-
tive consideration, exarnination and probing of what was being read."6
The great library of Alexandria, they note, gives evidence of specialized
practices of entextualization and the rationalization of access:
lt was universal because it was dedicatedto the preservation of books of
all ages and from the entire known world; it was rational because the
books it contained were to be reduced to order and to a system of das-
sification ... that enabled them to be arranged according to author,
work and content. That universalicy and rationalicy, however, were
directly dependent on writings that could be evaluared crirically, copied,
put into a book, caregorized and placed with orher books. (10)
Our history might evidendy be a long one, if we think of critical
reading this broadly. But what does "evaluated critically" mean here?
This story usefully ernphasizes che marerialconditions for che objectifi-
carien and segmentation of discourse that are presupposed by che ideal
of critical reading; and the contributors to Cavallo and Chartier's book
add many more, such as che triumph of the codex formar in antiquity
to the elimination of scriptio continua in the late Middle Ages.
This scholarship has the great advantage of reminding us thar what
we call critical reading presupposes forms for textual objectification
and a web of social relations around text objects. When ancient Greeks
appointed readers-in sorne cases slaves-whose task was to vocalize
texts of laws or monuments so that auditors might reflect on thern, it
would not have seemed obvious that rhe act of reading itself hada crit-
ica] orientation.7 A great many rechniques of entextualization have to
be laminated together to enable che free movement of critica! evalua-
tion in relation to its objects.8 But did crirical evaluation appear as the
inevitable meaning of the new procedures of text-objectification? And
22 Michael Warner
could that mean the same thing for che rnonks of Alexandria and for
modern students?
The rnodern idea of critica] reading dearly draws on a very old tra-
dition thar has gone under other narnes for rnosr of irs hisrory Martin
Irvine sees che cextual culture of Western Europe as having had a
remarkable continuity for more than 1,200 years in che artes grammat-
icae of che Iearned, Most of the forros of entextualization that are now
simply taken for granted in the word text developed over rhis long his-
tory of grammatica, with its fourfold división of the scientia interpretan-
di: lectio (rules far construing and reciting): enarratio (rules for
incerpretation, induding tropes, topics, syncax and sernantics); emenda-
tio (rules for authenticaring and correcting): and iudicium (evaluation).9
The modern idea of critical reading reorganizes this tradition, enfolding
che last three of rhe four categories. And there are many features of che
scholarly textual culture that of course carne to be paradigmatic of
uncritical reading. For exarnple, che performance of critica! reading as a
mode of free agency requires that ic not be seen as a strict application of
rules, in the rnanner of grammatica. Bue because grammatica formalized
a fundamental relation berween a syscemacized analycic mecalanguage
and its codified entextualized objects, critical readíng could modify che
metapragmatic framework whiJe rnaintaining most of the older forms of
textual objectificarion. The modern idea also continued the pattern in
grammatica of imagining che specialized techniques of liceracy as che
model of a much broader norrnative program-the firsc of the liberal
ares. "Learning, inrerpreration, and religious understanding," Irvine
writes, "were ali defined in che terrns of the large field of discourse that
spread out from che praccice of grammatica in schools, libraries and
"'°
scriptoria.
What we mean by critica! reading obviously has deep roots, sorne
phases of which (such as-humanist phHology) have been studied with
more attention chan others, 11 The phrase critica/ reading itself though
commonly raken by us to indicare a natural kind of reading-right, rea-
sonable, free, and good, bue often not much more specific than ~hac-
is, however, a relatively recent coinage, its current sense being difficult
to find befare the eighteenrh century. It can be clearly seen in Romamic
aesthetic philosophy, where already it is fused with che concept of che
Uncritical Reading 23
work of are. This was dernonstrated in a brilliant work by the young
Walter Benjamín:
The immanent rendency of the work and, accordingly, che standard for
its immanent criticism are the reílection that Iies at its basis and is
irnprinted in irs form. Yet this is, in rruth, not so much a standard of
judgmenc as, firsr and foremosr, the foundation of a complerely differ-
ent kind of cricicism-----one which is nor concerned with judging, and
whose center of gravíty lies not in the evaluarion of the single work but
in demonstrating its relations to all other works and, ulcimatdy, to the
idea of arr .... Criticisrn of a work is, rather, irs reflecrion, which can
only, as is self-evidenr, unfold rhe germ of the refleccion that is imma-
nenr to rhe work .... For che value of a work depends solely on whether
it rnakes its immanent critique possible or not.12
Wich rhis conception of art, Romanticism deepened the ideal of
critica! reading, as opposed to any other kind of reading, making it
seern like rhe unfolding of the necessity of are icself. From chis poinr
che adjective critica/ acquíres a new salience.
This conception reses, however, on earlier developments, such as the
apparent uníversalizarion of che critícal role in che public sphere, 13 lts
irnporrance to our pedagogy almost certainly has to do wirh even later
developments, in che lace nineteenth and early rwentieth century, since it
explicares and makes possible the kind of discourse that constitutes the
profession itself The critical reading we teach, in cther words, rnighr be
largely projected from our own circularory practices, I suspect ir is indeed
an essential element of critica! reading that the reader be imagined as a
producer of discourse. Critica! reading; in chis context, means a discipline
of commentary. projecred as immanent to reading. But a real explanarion
must go farrher; the self-interest of professionalized critics is insufficieht
to explain how a profession oriented to the ceaching of critica! reading
could juscify itself as a necessiry to nonprofessionals.
Obviously, more is ac stake chan mere text-processing, ac one
extreme, or the virtuosic textualism of professional critics, at the other
extreme. Because che rechniques of distanciaring knowJedge are ried ro
a subjeccivity-forming ascesis coward freedorn and have come to define
24 Michael Warner
agency in modern culcure, a discipline of critical reading can draw on
che widest cultural-historical meanings of critica! reason. We can see
rhis in lmmanuel Kant's "What is Enlightenmentr ," which derives so
much from the idea of critica! reading. "Ir is so easy to be immaturel"
he exdaims in the second paragraph. "If I have a book to have under-
standing in place of me . . . I need not make any efforcs at ali." Kant
contrasts chis immature, replicarive reading with che public use of rea-
son, of which his supreme example is "a man of Iearning ad dressing the
entire reading public." His assumption, evidemly, is that the readers of
rhat public must read differemly from the immature person.
The effort thar Kant thoughr readers should make in order to read
for rhemselves takes on, for him, the coloration of the rest of his proj-
ect; critical reading is an image of a certain kind of crirical reason. And
that association has left irs imprint. Kant's English translators used the
French word critique to translate the German word krítík, thus crear-
ing within English a difference between criticism and critique. This may
have been done to capture the special sense of kritik in Kant as (in
Walter Benjamin's phrase) "an esoteric terrn for the incomparable and
completed philosophical srandpoint": but its subsequent usage is much
broader. 14 Ever since, cricical reading has been identified with an ideal
of critique as a negative movement of disranciation, whether of disen-
gagement or repudiarion. (Ironically this might be most true within
cultural studies, which often prides itself in anti-Kantianism.)
There is a great deal of continuity berween Kanr's picture of critical
reading and dominant ideologies of reading in rwenrieth-cenrury public
culture, as can be seen in such manuals as How to Read a Book, the 1940
classic by Mortimer Ad.ler and Charles Van Doren, or more recencly How
to Read and Why, by Harold Bloom. Adler and Van Doren cal! their
model "active reading," and rhey make ir clear that chey intend a whole
sryle of personality and culture to flow from the practices that they rec-
ommend. It is, quite clearly, a discipline.1usc as Kant exclaims rhar, "If I
have a book to have understanding in place of me ... I need not make
any efforcs at ali," so Adler and Van Doren write that "to pass from
understanding less to understanding more by your own intellectual effort
in reading is something like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps."15
For Bloom as well, the problem of reading is essentially one of individ-
ual self-positing. His book opens wich this declaration: "lt rnatters, if
Uncritical Reading 25
individuals are to retain any capacíty to form their own judgments and
opinions, that they continue toread for themselves."16
Kant suggests that the difference between his two models of reading
<
is that between a reliance on externa! authoriry and the maturiry-
bestowing exercise of independent thought-a difference, in other
words, within the individual. But if we were to inquire into che histo-
ry of this normative program, surely we would want to cast our ner a
littíe wider than che individual reader. The new histories of reading
suggest that a vast cultural rnatrix is condensed into, and taken for
granted as, critica! reading: complex practices of entextualization and
explicit metadiscourse (archives, annotation, indices, debate genres,
commentary, summary and paraphrase, critical essays, professional
scholarship, research). These allow reading to be underscood as realiz-
ing a set of normarive stances (especially critical distance, reflexivity,
and explicitness, but generally others as well, such as independence,
irony, or subversiveness) thar in curn produce kinds of subjecrivity
(auronorny, individuality, freedom, citizenship, enlightenrnent) struc-
tured by a hierarchy of faculties.17
One rnight be forgiven, given the derivation of che word critic, for
thinking that critical reading is oriented to judgrnents of value, to sort-
íng worth, Critica! reading, one might think, would be reading that
reílects on its own aesthetic judgmems. Bue one would evidendy be
wrong. Professionalized literary criticisrn has for the most part given up
che business of rasre-making; that has been turned over to unprofes-
sionalized book reviewers. Critical reading is very different, it seems,
from what the critic (in the usual sense) does. Indeed, someone who
reads just to decide whether she likes something is more likely to be
counted-by us as an uncritical reader. The critica! poscure seems not to
be rhe thumbs-up-chumbs-down decision of aesthetic judgment.
(Benjamín notes rhis in the passage quored above.) Aesthetic judgment
is pracciced in countless domains; but when was the last time you heard
solemn injunctions to practice critical gardening, or critical hairstyling?
To some degree the separation of criticism from tasre can be seen
already in rhe Aristorelian-conception of the kritikos. Arisrotle method-
ically distinguishes his critical judgment from the raste judgmenrs of
audiences or the publics of popular conresrs, Criricisrn is che pracrice of
the few, not of.rhe many. The critic's work, as Andrew Ford summarizes
 26 Michael Warner
'IIJ
l
it, "is not to evaluare the moral or ethical value of particular poems, but
to derive from an exarnination of all forms of poecry che principies gov-
!111,1 erning each kind and decermining its proper pleasure."18 The criric
chus comes into being as rhe counterpart not only of the work, but of
the audience. Nevertheless Aristotle uses che cerm kritikos to describe a
man of judgment in general, and it is skill in judgment that rnakes lit-
erary cricicisrn a mode of ethical life and citizenship. The modern ideal
of critica! reading rneans sornething quite different. Like Arisrorle's, ir
also entails-more explicirly in sorne cases than in ochers-an ethical
personality and a model of citizenship. Bue ir has to do less wich habits
and skills of judgment than wirh openness to criticisrn. Indeed, one of
its hallmarks is the reservation of judgment.
Despite the differences between the ancient and modern under-
standings of che critical role, much can be learned about che narure of
critica! reading from Ford's historical account, The Origins of Criticism:
Literary Culture and Poetíc Theory in Classical Greece. Ford's insight
is rhar the main constiruenrs of literary criticism-the idea of genre,
che conception of poesis as arrifacr-rnaking, formal criceria of value-
reorganized the archaic song and performance practices that criticisrn
purported merely to describe. Thus che earliest recorded judgments of
worth about song have to do with appropriaceness to conrexr, where
song is primarily understood as ritual performance in an ethical envi-
ronmenr of conrext-specific obligations. Gradually such performances
carne to be reclassified as belonging not just to rheir immediate occa-
sions but also to formally defined classes of comparable performances:
genres. The new mode of judgment entailed both gain and loss, since
the erhical context of judgmenc-in which assessing song was a rnatter
of determining che nature of the social occasion and one's proper corn-
il !I portrnenc in it-s-could now be provisionally set aside.
For those who were willing, in certain contexts, to dispense alto-
gether with moral and ethical considerations in assessing artistic merit,
the loss of these crireria was compensated for by making linguistic form
expressive in itself. "Song" had becorne "poerry;" and poetry was a spe-
cial art of using language, che paradigmacic example of what we have
called since the eighteench cencury "Iiterarure.?'"
The process by which perforrnances were objectified, classified,
entextualized, systematized as genre, and circulated (as, for example, in
Uncritical Reading 27
:J contests) was long and conflicted. By rhe time of the schools it result-
ed in a special mode of evaluation, systernarically distinguished from
ordinary judgmencs of ethical appropriaceness or taste, practiced by
sophists and philosophers. The increasing use of writing for song rexts
obviously played sorne role in the process, but ir would be extremely
\ reductive to think that the transformation could be explained by such
simple categories as "oral" and "written." The emergence of che critic
required new conceptions of what a text was, what class of rhings it
resembled (skilled artifacts), how it was relaced to a producer (poer),
how ir might be classified apare from its performance conrext. In each
case, earlier conceptions had to be displaced in order to make room for
new, critic-friendly categories such as genre. "It is Rornanric to rhink of
sorne fall from pure unstructuredness into genres," Ford writes: "what
the fourrh-century literary theorists did was transforrn tradicional reli-
gious and social structures rhat had had implications for form into lit-
erary and formal structures chat had implications for sociecy and
religion. "2º What Ford's analysis helps us to understand in concrete
detail is that che role of che critic is not merely reading-that is, a rela-
tion berween a knower and a text. Ic presupposes a complex history of
entexrualization and a reordering of social occasions.
Adler and Van Doren demonstrate chis unwittingly throughout How
to Read a Book. At one poim, for example, they offer a surnrnary of four
"rules" of analytical reading:
1. Classify che book according to kind and subject rnatter.
2. State what che whole book is about wirh che utmost brevicy.
3. Enumerare its major parts in their order and relarion, and outline
these parts as you have outlined che whole.
4. Define che problem or problems che author is trying to solve.21
Anyone who attempts to gain critical discance on a rext by means of
such rules must be equipped wirh well-codified nocions such as "book"
and "author": an assumed realm of discourse in.which things are classi-
fied "according to kind and subject matter": genres of proposicional sum-
mary ("state whar rhe whole book is abour wich the utmost brevicy'') and
a language ideology in which such derivative genres can be seen noc as
wholly separare texts bue restatements of the same rneaning, rhus
\
l
l.
 \_
28 Michael Warner
abstracting meaning from textual form; a vigorously delineated sense of
totality ("oucline rhese pares as you have outlined the whole"); an
assumption that the text-object was created by che same canons of organ-
ization; and so on. Each of these steps posits a prior stage of reading, as
che source of che comprehension that equips us to do all these things.
(You must read che book before you can classify it by subject matter, for
example.) The rules thernselves are not about reading per se, but about
the manipulation of a whole battery of entextualizing frames and form
relationships. Ali of chis apparatus must exist ac leasc nocionally as means
to esrablish precisely a gap berween critica! knowledge and che prior,
uncritical reading it posits, while also asserting that what is achieved is
just "reading"-albeit of an especially rewarding and useful kind.
The more we learn about the history of reading, che more we learn how
peculiar chis formation is. Far exarn ple, che culture of reading that reses
on che idea of grasping the toraliry of a text might curn ouc ro be a rela-
tively minar episode in che overall history of reading. In a remarkable
recent essay, Pecer Stallybrass describes the imporcance of various styles of
discontinuous reading. Like che idea of the text as rotaliry, chese frag-
menting practices were enabled by che codex formar, which allows read-
ers to jump around in texts fairly freely, wich indices and bookmarks and
fingers wedged between pages. One very prestigious example would be
the reading of scripcure. John Locke once complained (in A Parapbrase
and Notes on the Epistles ofSt. Paul) that che custom of printing scripcure
in verse/chapter divisions prevented common readers from grasping the
sacred text as a whole.22 Bue Scallybrass shows that Locke's idea was some-
thing of aninnovation, and one that ran counter to che institucional prac-
rice ofbible reading in church services. During che heyday of the genre of
the novel, he suggests, che continuous paging through of a single rext
carne to be taken as the normal way of reading, but this was not che case
in earlier periods, and in che currenc developmenr of screen Iiteracies ir
may no longer be true. "When cultural critics nostalgically recall an imag-
ined past in which readers unscrolled cheir books continuously frorn
beginning to end, they are reiersing che long history of the codex and che
printed book as indexical forms. The novel has only been a brilliantly per-
verse interlude in the long hiscory of discontinuous reading."23
In imagining that one might try to grasp the Bible as a textual whole,
the better to position oneself as its underscanding reader, Locke was
!\
Uncritical Reading 29
excending sorne recent innovations in scripcural commentary-the
beginnings of what would eventually come to be called the Higher
Cricicism. (See Amy Hollywood's essay in chis volume for an account of
how classical scholarship and scriptural exegesis converged in that
history.) He was probably influenced in sorne measure by Spinozas
Theological-Politícal Treatise, published in 1670. 24 Spinoza was well aware
of the novelty of the mechad he there proposed for reading che Bible:
Now to put it briefly, I hold that che method of interpreting Scripture
is no different from che mechod of interpreting Nature, and is in fact in
complete accord wich ic. For the merhod of interpreting Nature consists
essentially in composing a detailed study of Nature from which, as
being the source of our assured data, we can deduce rhe definicions of
rhe things of Nature. Now in exaccly che same way che task of Scriprural
inrerpreration requires us to make a scraightforward scudy of Scriprure,
and from this, as rhe source of our fixed dara and principies, to deduce
by logical inference che meaning of the authors of Scripture. 25
Text can be assirnilared to natural objects, and chus become data for
che detached analysis thar is here explicicly modeled on scientific
method. As Spinoza continues, ir becomes clear that the codex formar
is necessary to his rnethod. His second rule (following the necessity of
philological undersranding of ancient languages) is as follows:
The pronouncements made in each book should be assembled and list-
ed under headings, so rhat we can rhus have to hand ali che texrs that
treat of che same subjecc. Next, we should note ali those rhat are
ambiguous or obscure, or that appear to contradice one anocher. Now
here I term a pronouncement obscure or clear according to the degree
of difficulcy with which che meaning can be eliciced from the contexr,
and not according to che degree of difficulry with which its trurh can be
perceived by reason. For che point at issue is merely che meaning of che
texts, noc their truth. (88)
The ensuing analysis demonstrares vividly rhe sorc of arhletic colla-
tion necessary to analyz.e che comradictions, discrepancies, figurational
patterns, shifts of address and pronomial usage, narrative redundancies

30 Michael Warner
and digressions, and other textual features rhar become the "data" of
understanding. He does dwell on particular passages-worrying over
what could be meant by che expression "God is fire," for example-but
che agency ol incerprerarion is everywhere manifesred by movement
between passages, like the movement necessary to realize rhat "God is
fire" contradicts other claims and must be understood in a special
sense. Spinozas method thus foregrounds his own (critical) agility of
movemenr, induding a physical movement back and forch among
numbered and indexed pages in a fixed sequence, at the same time that
it backgrounds an ideal of (uncritical) conrinuous reading.
In his reading of Jeremiah, that backgrounded ideal is che standard
against which the text can be shown to fail, since Jeremiah begins nar-
ratives, drops thern, gives mulriple versions of the same srory, loops
back in apparent self-forgetfulness, "continuing to pile up prophecies
with no regard of chronological order, until in chapter 38 he resumes
what he began to relate in chapter 21, as if the in tervening fifteen chap-
ters were a parenthesis," and so on. This is the sort of thing you can say
about a texr given the ease of discontinuous textual checking needed to
discover the text's apparent corruption. A great deal of page-rurning
and nore-taking must have been involved in rhis project of evaluaring
che sacred text as a whole. lt is the rnethod of a scholar provided with
arnple learning, time, industry, paper, and finding aids.
Compare Spinoza's reading of Jeremiah to that of his close contern-
porary, Mary Rowlandson. She, too, manipulared the codex formar of
che Bible in a way rhat she understood as enjoined upon her in rhe
sincere effort ar understanding. While held captive by an Arnerindian
war party in the woods of New England in the winter of 1676, she
rook up the Bible that had been given her by one of the Indians,
opened ics pages at random, and read what she understood to be rhe
passages presented to her eye by Providence:
I opened my Bible to read, and che Lord broughc that precious scrip-
cure to me, Jeremiah 31.16. Thus saith che Lord, refrain thy voice from
weeping, and chine eyes from rears, for thy work shall be rewarded, and
they shall come again from the land of che enemy. This was a sweet cor-
dial to me, when I was ready to faint, many and many a time have I sat
down, and wept sweedy over chis scripcure.26
11·
Uncritical Reading 31
Rowlandson is just the sort of reader about whom Locke corn-
plained; the sense of the whole is not an aím of her reading. Sincere
understanding, for her, does nor require analytic collation, linguistic
comparison, contextual framing, or any orher effort ar detachmenr
ii
from the rhetoric of address. The relevant unit the verse. This might
have something to do with the practice of memorization, since the
verse divisions of scripture were convenient gobbets for internalization.
Bur there is a richer normacive program behind this apparently arbi-
rrary selection as well. Her way of reading is enframed by the assump-
tion that the text is everywhere uniformly addressed by God, in the
vernacular, to the believer. Rowlandson performs che same ritual
repeatedly throughout her captiviry, and makes ir dear that opening
rhe Bible and lighting on a passage is, for her, rhe way to allow God to
direcr her reading. The apparently random movemenrs offered by the
codex formar are the medium not of critica! agency but of providemial
direction, The chance opening of che pages helps to ensure thac her
reading will not be an expression of her agency.
Of course, that does not mean that it is passive, either, Quite the con- •
crary: it requires repetirion, incorporacion, and aífecrive regulation. She
sits dowri and weeps, and within the framework of her reading protocol
chis way of taking che text to heart is a necessaty activiry of understand-
ing. Nor was Rowiandsons method emírely naive. It was supported by
an extensive and self-conscious literature of devotional manuals on che
1 reading of scripture. As one scholar of that literature notes, "Going over
1=
,¡ =
the same biblical passages, putting oneself through the stages of rhe
redemptive order, rereading favorire manuals again and again, produced
a cumulative effect that our rwenrieth-century desire for novelty fails to
comprehend, "~7 An elaborare edifice of theology, of type and antirype,
lies behind che (to us) unfathomable idea that second-person address in
11
the verses ofJeremiah could be taken as directed immediacely to a weep-
¡ íng hostage in che woods of an Anglo-American colony.
Rowlandson's reading ofjeremiah foregrounds the elemental dyad of
!
j God and rhe soul as che situation of address. It is a situation rich with
activiry, Recognirion of che text by che reader is among orher things the
medium of God's agency in comforting and reviving her, and of her
L¡
li agency in obeying, placing trust, suppressing self, etc. She construes
che text as immediate demand upon her, and upon her emotions. (le is
.j
j
jj
32 Michael Warner
sometimes argued that chis kind of ethicalization of address is cypical
of manuscript culture, but quite apart from the fact that Rowlandson
was reading a printed Bible it would be hard to sustain che causal
daims implied in that analysis.)
Spinoza, too, sees existencial demands being placed on the reader by
divine trurh. Bue for him the situation of address in which divinicy dis-
closes itself to che soul requires that he objectify che text's situation of
address, its oriencacion to context, its hisrorical occasion, che lirnited
capacities of its original addressees, and so on. The critica! reader muse
be prepared to extract che text from a conrext deemed to be its primary
siruation, in extreme versions texts can be judged in what is taken to
be a context of no context. At any rate, the critic's judgmenc is not in
the first instance abour contexr-appropriateness. Interpretation has
been in this limited sense de-ethicalized, though in Spinoza's case only
by introducing a new ethical agency of interpretive objectification.
Paradoxically, Spinoza's reader becomes more responsible by consider-
ing himself less directly addressed.
To readers in che discipline of moderniry, one of these ways of reading
Jeremiah will count as critical, che orher as uncritical. Whac is the differ-
ence? The answer to that question must have to do not just with che
material object-chough che physical Bibles in question already objecti-
fy a greac many assumptions about text, held in common by both read-
ers-but with che enframing, metapragmatic construal of the situation
of reading, including che agency and affective subjecriviry of che reader,
rhe ends and means of reading, and che encompassing relationships of
reading praccice, che way the text is organized indexically around its read-
ing. All of this is immanent to reading, an imaginary and therefore par-
tially unconscious grasping of the situation of reading icself.
Scholars of literature are however seldom prepared to recognize in
their own materials anything that they would have to describe as
uncritical reading. So che rima! gesmre, when confronted wirh a
Rowlandson, is to show that chis apparendy uncritical reading really
was critica! in sorne sense or another, Thus Rowlandson can be said to
read che way she <loes as a strategy for subverting ministerial authoriry,
oras a means of self-positing.28 When critica! reading is established as
a global language of value, such maneuvers become necessary to rescue
texts for any canon, even the amicanonical canon. We are very good ar
Uncritical Reading 33
assimilating texts and aurhors to the normative ideals of our own crit-
ical activity. But those normative dimensions of her reading practice
that cultivate piety-precisely in the suppression of whar we would call
critica! disrance or agency-must be ignored or explained away.
So one of che deepest challenges posed by rival, uncritical frame-
works of reading is recognizing that they are just rhat, rival frame-
works. The very specific culture of critical reading is not che only
normacively or reflexively organized method of reading, to which ali
others should be assirnilared. Because che historiography is still emerg-
ing, and because che tendency to project critical reading as the neces-
sary implication of reason or agency is so,great, we do not even know
as much as we would like about what che alternative frameworks have
been, are, or rnight become in a future of screen literacies. Uncritical
reading is che unconscious of the profession; whatever worlds are
organized around frameworks of reading other than crirical protocols
remain, for the most part, terra incognita.29
Any atternpt to trace che history, excenc, and limits of che culture of
critical reading will face methodological issues that will force us to go
beyond che current state of che history of che book. The new hisrory of
reading usefully defamiliarizes che picture of reading as the mere pro-
cessing of preconstituted text, and leads us to consider the practices of
entextualization. The "rnarerialiry of the rext" has become something
of a slogan for this project. But what needs to be defamiliarized is not
just che materialiry of the text, The history of reading encompasses the
norrnative construal of che reading situation-including the agency of
che reader-as an elemenc of that reading situation. A history of "crit-
ica! reading" in particular, cherefore, would have to include rarher more
than the prorocols of rexr-processing, cross-referencing, and citation
that Spinoza so beautifully exemplifies; ir would have to describe the
way in which reading subjeccs can be imagined to asserc their own
agency and freedom in relation to maximally.objecrified texts,
In Spinozas case a significant part of that situation is righc on the
surface; he himself makes ir clear that the basic interprerive posture
behind his analysis is one that he expects not just of -the erudite
philosopher, and not just of che reader of scripture, but of the subjecc
in a sociery of mutual benefir. He imagines a social order thar is con-
stituted out of individual acts of judgment, from che bottom up. Texts
34 Michael Warner
considered as quasi-natural objects serve as che foil far readers who can
extract themselves from che imrnediate sicuation of address, exerting
cheir own agency. Those readers are in relacion to each orher by means
of derivative discourses of argument and analysis, so their reading can
be at once the medium of internal differentiation and the common ref-
erence points in a world of difference. The Tbeoiogical-Political Treatise
is indeed remarkable far the clarity wich which its exegecical method is
explicitly linked to a piccure of a markec-based republican social order.
Thar, of course, should not prevenc us from seeing that in other ways
che picture of agencialized subjectivity in critical reading is a structur-
ing element in che social imaginary behind the treacise. 30
-Indeed, treatise form itself-as exemplified in the Theological-
Political Treatise-presupposes a certain reading culture, in which
book-length rexts are taken as syscemacized arguments to be atrribured
in toto to cheir aurhors as intellectual property, such that we can say, "In
Spinoza we find x,"; or, "Spinoza holds that x," and so on.31 As Pierre
Hadoc has recencly pointed out, chis conception of treatise forro repre-
sents a watershed in che rnetaconception of philosophizing. As philos-
ophy carne to be more and more identified with this specialized textual
form following Descartes, philosophy carne to stand less and less for a
counternormative way of living and became more and more an archi-
tecture of proposicional property.32 The texts of philosophy carne less
and less to be artifacts of dialogue or scripts of spiricual exercise, and
carne inscead to be models of objectifiable sysrernaticiry. In rhis role
chey began to serve as che ideal self-image of philosophizing-though
of course philosophical writing could only play this role once rexts had
been conceived as intelleccual property and as navigable totalities
offered to readers for che performance of their own crirical agency. In
countless such ways, che entexcualizing activity of che critical reader
always lies beyond the grasp of critica! reading.
A systematic inquiry into the form-relationships of critical reading,
in addition to opening up inquiry into rhe alternatives currently
glossed as uncricical, might also help to break through a number of
impasses in contemporary thinking. The discipline of subjectivity
enjoined upon che cricical reader, far example, is one ching that is often
missed in contemporary criciques of the Kantian tradition, or of che
critica! reason chat he is thought to exemplify. Perhaps rhe rnistake here
Uncritical Reading 35
is to identify a Kantian metalanguage with the culture he sought to
codify, credicing him with too much. There is certainly a tendency in
che liberal tradition to identify critica! reason with sornething that can-
noc be given content, that is not a cultural form in itself, but thar is
conceived as mere negacive potential, a kind of perpetua] openness to
further criticism. By che same token, critical reading can be imagined
in negative terms as well, as reading that is open to reflection on its
own presuppositions, far example. The importance of this receding
horizon of critique to che culture of critica! reading might help to
explain why it seems so difficulc for anyone to define or codify critical
reading: to do so would be to expose oneself to further criticism, and
chus fail to exhaust its meaning. This normative language is conse-
quencial and not to be waved away as trivial. Bue ir distracts attention
from the equally important reality that critical reading is a historically
and formally mediated praccice, wich an elaborare discipline of subjec-
tivity, and one chat now confronts rivals as it has done in che past. That
praccíce-as che example of Spinoza suggests-is by no means coex-
tensive with che Kantian or neoKantian glossings of it. And che rich
intensicies ic affords are obscured boch by its own normative self-con-
ception and by the most common criticisms of ir,
For example, Bernard Williams faults the Kantian conception of
critical reason for what he sees as its essentiaUy characterless disengage-
ment. His comments would apply, mutatis mutandis, to sorne of che
most powerful self-conceptions of critica! reading:
This ideal involves an idea of ultimare freedom, according to which I
am not entirely free so long as there is any ethically significant aspect of
myself thar belongs to me sirnply as a result of the process by which I
was contingently formed. If my values are mine simply in virtue of
social and psychological processes to which I have been exposed, rhen
(rhe argument goes) ir is as though I had been brainwashed: I cannot be
a ful\y free, rational, and responsible agent. Of course, no one cari con-
trol their upbringing as they receive ir, except perhaps marginally and
in irs later stages. Whac che ideal demands, rather, is rhar my whole out-
look should in principie be exposed to a critique, as a result of which
every value that I hold can become a consideration for me, critically
accepted, and should not remain merely sornerhing rhat happens to be
 36 Michael Warner
pan of me. It presupposes a Platonic idea of che moral self as character-
less .... If che aspiration makes sense, then che criticising self can be
separated from everything that a person contingently is-in itself, che
criticising self is simply rhe perspective of reason or moralíty.33
Whether this is an accurate objection to liberal philosophy I leave to
il1:11.
0 Jl.1 others. What interests me here is that the endlessly receding ideal of
1;1!:.1 crirical reason described by Williams arises from a historically rich cul-
ture of reading in which rhe critical activity is anything but empty,
characterless, or unmediated. The rigorous extraction of oneself from
che ethical demands of direct textual address, for exarnple, requires a
rnanipularion of intergeneric relationships that can only seem charac-
terless once they have become second nature-as to most of us they
have. Cricical reading is the pious labor of a historically unusual sort of
person. If we are going to inculcare irs pieties and techniques, we might
begin by recognizing that that is what they are.
Notes
l. Henry Giroux, "Introducrion" to Paulo Freire and Donaldo Macedo,
Literacy: Reading tbe Word and tbe World (South Hadley, MA: Bergin
and Gervey, 1987), 15.
2. Barbara Johnson speculates on this possibility in Tbe Crítica! Difference
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 3-4 andpassim.
3. See Jean Marie Goulemot, Ces liures qu'on ne lit que d'une main (Paris:
Editions Alinea, 1991), trans. by James Simpson for sorne reason as
Forbidden Texts: Erotic Literature and Its Readers in Eighteenth-Century
Fmnce (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995).
4. "Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; or, You're So Paranoid, You
ProbablyThink This Introduction is Abour You," in Nouel-Gazing:
Queer Readings in Fiction, ed. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1997), 1'-37.
5. Saba Mahmood, Politics ofPiety (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2004). The idea that rhe disciplines of piety should be not simply
understood to be criticized bur understood in a way that will parochial-
ize the knower's assumptions is one rhar for Mahmood represents a
higher and berter understanding of critique: "Critique, I believe, is
most powerful when ir leaves open rhe possibility thar we might also be
remade in che process of engaging another's worldview, that we might
come to learn things thar we did not already know before we undertook
the engagement" (36-37).
6. Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier, eds., A History ofReading in the
Wést (Amhersr: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999): introduction, 9.
Uncritical Reading 37
7. Jesper Svenbro, "Archaic and Classical Greece: The Invenrion of Silent
Reading," in Cavallo and Chartier, History of Reading, 37-63.
8. Here I owe much to Michael Silverstein and others. See Natural
Histories ofDiscourse, ed. Michael Silversrein and GregUrban (Chicago:
Universiry of Chicago Press, 1996).
9. Martín Irvine, The Making o/Textual Culture: 'Grammatica' and Literary
Theory, 350-1100 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
1 O. lrvine, Making o/Textual Culture, p. 461.
11. See Anthony Grafton, Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship
in an Age ofScience, 1450-1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Universiry
Press, 1991).
12. Walter Benjamin, "The Concept of Criticism in German
Romanricisrn," SelectedWritings, Volume 1: 1913-1926, ed. Marcus
Bullock and Michael Jennings (Cambridge: Harvard Universiry Press,
1996), 116-200, quotation at p. 159.
13. On the changing social meaning of che critics role, see Joan Dejean,
Ancients against Moderns: Culture Wárs and the Making of a Fin de Siecle
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 31-77.
14. Benjamín, "The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism," p. 117.
15. Morrirner J. Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book (1940),
rev. ed. 1972 (New York: Simon and Schusrer), 8.
16. Harold Bloom, How to Read and Wlry (New York: Scribner, 2001), 21.
17. In Publics and Counterpublics I have argued that one of the most important
frameworks for allowing reading to count as the use of reason in Kants
sense is in facc an intergeneric field of circulation ideologized as a public.
"The attriburion of agency to publics works in most cases because of the
direct transposirion from prívate reading acrs to the sovereignty of opinion.
Ali of the verbs for public agency are verbs for prívate reading, transposed
upward to rhe aggregate of readers. Readers may scrutinize, ask, rejecr,
opine, decide, judge, etc. Publics can do exactly these things. And nothing
else. Publícs, unlike mobs or crowds, remain incapable of any activity that
cannot be expressed through such a verb. Activiries of reading that do not
fit the ideology of reading as silenr, prívate, replicable decoding, curling
up, mumbling, fantasizing, gesriculating, ventriloquizing, writing margina-
lia, etc. also find no counterparts in public agency." Thus where rhe mod-
ern imaginary of che public sphere is the background of lirerate pracrice,
rhis hierarchy of faculties will acquire a certain inevitable force.
18. Andrew Ford, The Origíns of Criticism: Literary Culture and Poetic
Authority in Classical Greece (Princeron: Princeton University Press,
2002), 266.
19. Ford, Origíns, p. 22. Ford makes similar poinrs throughout his study, as
for example p. 155: "what might be called an increasing 'textualizarion'
1 of song through the fifch century abetted the formal study of its 'inner'
propercies."
ti.1, 20. Ford, Origins, p. 251.
,., 21. Adler and Van Doren, Hoto to Read a Book, p. 95.
22. See Patrick Collinson, "The Coherence of the Text: How ir Hangeth
Togecher: The Bible in Reforrnarion England," in Tbe Bible, the
lJ
i
l
JI
 ·1
j
38 M ichael Warner

Reformation and the Church, ed. W. P. Scephens (Sheffield: Sheffield

Academic Press, 1995), 84-108.
2
23. Peter Stallybrass, "Books and Scrolls: Navigacing che Bible," in Jennifer
Andersen and Elizabeth Sauer, eds., Books and Readers in Early Modern
England (Philadelphia: Universicy of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 42-79,
Read.Jng as
24.
quotation ac p. 47.
On che transmission and impact of this early work of Spinoza's, see
Self-Annihilation
Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and tbe Making of
Modemity 1650-1750 (Oxford: Oxford Universicy Press, 2002). Amy Hollywood
25. Baruch Spinoza, Theological-Poluical Treatise, trans. Samuel Shirley
(Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001), 87.
26. Mary Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness ofGod (1682), in
Myra Jehlen and Michael Warner, eds., The English Literatures of
America, 1500-1800 (New York: Roudedge, 1997), p. 357.
27. Charles Hambrick-Stowe, The Practice ofPiety: Puritan Deuotional
Disciplines in Seventeenth-Century New Engfand (Chapel Hill: University of Beloved, whar will beguines
Norrh Carolina Press, 1982), 159. Further informacion on che hermeneu-
tic context can be found in Lisa M. Gordis, Opening Scripture: Bible and religious people say
Reading and lnterpretive Attthority in Puntan New England (Chicago: When chey hear the excellence
Universicy of Chicago Press, 2003), though uníorrunately Gordis does noc of your divine song?
mention Rowlandson and does not raise che larger quescions posed here. A
very instructive piece of scholarship is che chaprer by David D. Hall tirled Beguines, priests, clerks, and preachers,
"Readers and Wricers in Early New England," in A History of the Book in Augustinians, and Carmelites,
America, Volume One: The Colonial Book in the Atfantic World, ed. Hugh And che Friars Minar will say that I err,
Amocy and David D. Hall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
Because I write of che being
2000), 117-51, as well as pp. 377..,410 in che same work.
28. The most ingenious such reading is Mitchell Breirweiser, American Of purified Love/the one purified by Love.
Puritanism and the Defense ofMourning: R.eligion, Grief, and Etbnology Ido not work to save rheir Reason,
in Mary White Rowfandson's Captivity Narrative (Madison: Universicy of
Who makes them say chis to me. (Mirouer, Ch. 122, ,p. 344)
Wisconsin Press, 1990).
29. For che most pare; see such notable exceptions as Paul Griffichs,
Religious Reading: The Place ofReading in the Practice of Religion (New For Germany, che criticism of religion has been largely complered, and
York: Oxford Universicy Press, 1999), a useful book though rnarred by che cricicism of religion is the premise of ali cricicism.
its polemicizing dismissal of critical reading as "consumerist."
30. The relarion berween cricical reading and modern social imaginaries is
an enormous problem to which I can only gesture here; for an explana- -Karl Marx, "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's
cion of how che partly unconscious grasp of che social is linked to ideas Philosophy ofRight: Introduction"
of an order of mutual benefit, see Charles Taylor's Modern Social
lmaginaries (Durham: Duke Universicy Press, forchcoming).
31. This is arguably true in Spinoza's case even though the text was published Critica! Reading
anonymously; ic immediately sparked an attempt to idencify irs author,
32. This argumenc is advanced pardy in his What Is Ancient Philosophy? When I first read Míchael Warner's proposal thar scholars begin to con-
trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge.Má; Harvard Universicy Press, sider the nature and importance of "uncritical reading," I imrnediately
2002), and also in Philosophy as a Wiy ofLifi: Spiritual Exercises ftom
Socrates to Foucault. ed. Pierre Hadot and Arnold 1. Davidson. ttans. began to wonder what "crirical reading" was and che extent to which it
Michael Chase (NY: Blackwell, 1995). differed across contemporary disciplines (however fraught rhese
33. Bernard Williarns, Shame and Necessity (Berkeley: University of boundaries, first established by Kant in The Conflíct of tbe Faculties,
California Press, -1993), 158-59.
have become). My presumption is that our conceptions of what

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