Abstract
Chapter four looks deeper into the fascinating ‘paranoia paradox’ that has emerged in the previous two chapters. Critics argue that critique is out of touch with social reality because it has become invested with the wrong motives, namely suspicions about hidden agencies and inequalities. Yet, as the previous chapter demonstrates, very similar reading practices are lively and abundant in everyday life. Following on from the theoretical and method directives discussed so far, this chapter focuses on Kathleen Stewart’s ethnography, Ordinary Affects (2007). Explicitly framed as a turn against what Sedgwick terms ‘paranoid reading’, Stewart’s evocative ethnography, in a bizarre irony, describes a hyper-vigilant public. Drawing together quotidian and academic methods of interpretation, this chapter foregrounds the value of the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ as a dynamic, everyday method for navigating shifting social structures, including the changeable structures, rules and values of methods themselves. It shows that critical attention can be intuitive and creative: the very means by which people anticipate the future and make unsure decisions in real time.
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