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cover of episode Dominik Zechner, "The Violence of Reading: Literature and Philosophy at the Threshold of Pain" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)

Dominik Zechner, "The Violence of Reading: Literature and Philosophy at the Threshold of Pain" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)

2025/6/20
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New Books in Critical Theory
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Caleb Zakarin
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Dominik Zechner
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Caleb Zakarin: 我认为这本书引人入胜，跨学科性强，涵盖了电影、哲学、小说等多种主题，阅读体验极佳。 Dominik Zechner: 我最初对文本性、暴力以及语言与痛苦之间的关系非常感兴趣，这最终促成了《阅读的暴力》这本书的创作。我发现，即使在痛苦中，语言仍然存在，尽管它可能不是逻辑性的或交流性的。痛苦会削弱语言的代表能力，但正是这种代表能力的崩溃揭示了一种痛苦。阅读不仅激活了身体，还产生了一个由语言塑造的、充满语言的全新身体。阅读是一种具有侵入性的体验，它会引发一种模棱两可的同意，因为读者无法完全预知文本将如何影响他们。阅读创造了一个能够承受痛苦的身体，这个身体不再是解剖学上的或生物学上的，而是一个由语言构建的身体。阅读是一种受虐行为，因为一旦你开始阅读，你就会陷入别人的欲望之中。阅读还涉及一种参考谬误，即将语言构建的所指物误认为真实的东西。阅读是放弃所指，它会使我们与经验现实分离，并陷入一个以暴力裂痕为标志的语言现实漩涡。

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The author discusses his approach to reading, explaining that he doesn't read for leisure but always analyzes texts academically, and his preference for reading with a pen and paper to take notes.
  • The author doesn't read for fun, always analyzing texts academically.
  • He prefers reading on paper with a pen to take notes.
  • He rarely reads on screen and uses a specific Japanese pencil for note-taking.

Shownotes Transcript

The Violence of Reading: Literature and Philosophy at the Threshold of Pain)* *(Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) expounds the scene of reading as one that produces an overwhelmed body exposed to uncontainable forms of violence. The book argues that the act of reading induces a representational instability that causes the referential function of language to collapse. This breakdown releases a type of "linguistic pain" (Scarry; Butler; Hamacher) that indicates a constitutive wounding of the reading body. The wound of language marks a rupture between linguistic reality and the phenomenal world. Exploring this rupture in various ways, the book brings together texts and genres from diverse traditions and offers close examinations of the rhetoric of masochism (Sacher-Masoch; Deleuze), the relation between reading and abuse (Nietzsche; Proust; Jelinek), the sublime experience of reading (Kant; Kafka; de Man), the "novel of the institution" (Musil; Campe), and literary suicide (Bachmann; Berryman; Okkervil River).

Dominik Zechner is currently an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

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