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That is not the whole story, however. It does not take much reading into the book to realise that I do not think that deconstruction and lines of critical thinking associated with it deserve their reputation as pedantic snuffers-out of pleasure. Many of the positions advocated are adaptations or derivations or extensions of what I take to be the valid insights of deconstructionist, and more generally of post-structuralist, thinking. To that extent, I have been a fellow traveler of the theory some of whose applications I also criticise. ‘After’ in the title is ambiguous, then, intended to mean both ‘after the fact of and in amelioration of some of the damage which the theory has done’, and also to some degree, ‘after the manner of.’
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The modes of reading described in the first chapter codify what I take to be three naturally occurring orientations to any text. The premise here is that attention operates, when it is allowed to, as an energy which flows naturally to its object prior to any decision to read in a certain manner. ‘Naturally’ in this context carries the sense of an immediate, automatic orientation of attention which precedes conceptual thought.
The suggestions offered––confirmations of already-existing inclinations rather than a prescriptive system––provide the focal point of whatever ideas are generated by the reader, which are then arranged by him or her around that point of attention. After an initial response has been established, a more considered ordering may take its place. Nonetheless, it remains a central and centering proposition that the first un-preoccupied act of attention should not be rationalised too early.
If, for example, an initial response were to bear upon the nature of the self on this side of the page, ideas of self-actualisation with their Iserian, Hegelian or Ingardian overtones should be deferred during the initial stages of reading. This holds even more for application of those systems from which such terminology and their intricate analyses of reception are drawn. Whatever the mystical overtones of saying so, it must be said: names are potent. Mere citation colours cognition.