Reading's Reason

Abstract

Reading is unreasonable. If, as Theodor Adorno has contended, to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric, then surely reading--whether of poetry, philosophy, or newsprint -is doubly obscene [Cultural Criticism 34]. For Adorno, such barbarism means inattentiveness to barbaric historical truths; it is the misuse of rhetorical reflexivity for the perpetuation, rather than the critique, of social conditions. In other words: to write poetry after Auschwitz is to reproduce, and thereby implicitly condone, a contradictory society within which lyric verse and mass murder are coexistent. By extension, reading--as a pastime within the culture industry--appears to achieve nothing but the expression of such cultural reification. Reading is, as Adorno has written of criticism, self-satisfied contemplation in the face of systematized dissatisfaction [Cultural Criticism 34]. The Enlightenment had characterized reading as a process of educational reasoning, a dialogue with professional intellectuals about progress and truth. Although this idea carries a rather didactic undertone, as Michel de Certeau has pointed out [Reading 166-67], its representation of the book as a mobile repository of thought and criticism seems reasonable enough. Yet, in the face of such barbarism as Auschwitz, the practice of reading appears shamefully futile--a blindfolded refusal of historical truth, rather than an informed response to its implications. Reading is not alone in its unreasonableness: reason too has become unreasonable, Max Horkheimer has argued in Eclipse ofReason. Consequently, Horkheimer proposes that the denunciation of what is currently called reason is the greatest service reason can render [187]. Objective reason, Horkheimer suggests, has been eclipsed by its insipid, subjective counterpart, rationality. Rationality defines what is reasonable as what is useful; it does not seek truth as an end in itself. Reason has thus become merely a mental tool with which one can make effective plans in neocapitalist society. In short, rationality privileges means over ends. This subjective pastiche of reason, like poetry after Auschwitz, dumbly reiterates the status quo through devising ever more efficient procedures by which tasks may be carried out. It does not criticize the objective ends that are actually furthered by such procedures. Similarly, poetry (for example, that of James Fenton) invents ornate and affective representations of modern barbarism without removing the conditions within which barbarism thrives. In this regard, reading is