Stanley Cavell, Shakespeare and ‘The Event’ of Reading

Abstract

In the context of a third-level liberal arts education, this article interrogates the idea and practice of ‘reading’. Questioning what might be at stake more publicly in this most private of acts, I am interested particularly in how certain conceptualizations of reading inhibit the pedagogical moment in its essential unpredictability. When we refer to reading as a process of ‘comprehension’, ‘absorption’ or ‘appropriation’, I argue, there is a real danger that we obstruct or close down the horizon of textual experience. In development of this argument, I draw on the philosophy of Stanley Cavell. I focus particularly on Cavell's reading of King Lear, arguing that the philosopher's engagement with the Shakespearean text is interestingly at odds with the model of ‘active criticism’ so beloved and encouraged by departments of English Literature. As it forgoes typical educational emphases on the known and the fully certain, this Cavellian engagement aligns in interesting and important ways with the weak pedagogy of Derrida and Caputo. I conclude that this Cavellian mode of reading creates an enlightened space for teaching as event.