Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay Is About You

In 2003, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick published the essay «Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading. Or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay Is About You» as part of the anthology Touching Feeling. Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. In it, Sedgwick asks why Western critique operates mostly with paranoid readings, readings that aim to expose hidden violent structures, and suggests a «reparative» approach that focusses not only on what is being written, or said, or done but how and to what end. The text was a starting point for Geraldine Tedder’s essay «You Are Probably Completely Oblivious That This Text Actually Is About You» and will kick off a series of texts in line with Sedgwick’s thinking as to what it might or might not mean to read and write «reparatively».