Reading Blindly: Literature, Otherness, and the Possibility of an ...

blindness: the outcome (and even the situation leading up to it) is unknowable. ¹

So is “how to read properly, ethically,” and then, more precisely, “how to read as if each reading is a singular situation,” an impossible question? Or, if not an impossible question—after all, we did ask it—then perhaps a question that can only remain a question, one that cannot be closed off, be completed, and, by extension, be theorized (in the sense of forming a complete theory about it)?

Ethical reading is a conception of reading as a space of (and for) negotiation. The moment of reading is the moment when the “how” and “ethics” collide; one can never read in a vacuum (both the text and the reader have their respective historicities), but in order to read, the reader must be free to respond fully to the text. In this way, we face two contradictory demands: one must read as if for the first time, that is, without any preconceived notions of reading or of the text, but at the same time, it is impossible to read without any prior knowledge of reading—and this makes the situation aporetic. After all, we are born into reading; reading precedes us, and much of reading relies on conventions. But it is precisely in this space that the negotiation and choosing take place. Each decision, and each choice, is temporal, and each instance of reading is a new one—no two readings will be the same. It is within this space, this temporal—and singular—space, that reading can occur as a singularity, and in which a potentially new reading can occur.

If each reading is temporal and hence potentially new, it opens up this question: Is a virginal reading possible? Can one read as if reading for the first time? ² This brings into question the status of memory and forgetting with respect to reading. Clearly, memory is part of the process of reading: one must remember the rules of language, and one must also remember what one