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The social space of reading

February 11th, 2009

And here’s where all the other “not writing” work comes in: I don’t write for myself, I write to be read. It is a social act, shaped and informed by others and meant for others. But after four novels of my own, I began to realize that hardly any of us knows how to read. The times we live in are actively hostile to reading, because text is a powerful political space with profoundly disruptive potentials. We are taught, instead, to consume books; we are taught to identify them with the author; we are taught to clarify their ambiguities and resolve their paradoxes; we are taught to “master” a text by aligning it with what others agree to be true; we are taught to hold our meanings provisionally, as just “my interpretation.” But my writing — a lot of writing — doesn’t work that way. Writing is a social space for new relationships and new meanings, unresolved ones full of paradox and flux, and with no room for mastery. It isn’t about me; the text is a site of socially negotiated meanings that change as we change.

by Nelson Filed under: dreams

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