Thinking like a feminist and reading with love

Abstract

In this paper, we expand the Foucauldian question of what is thinking doing? We approach the question in the context of reading as an entirely ontological enterprise. Aligned with the special issue theme of reading as a “long preparation,” and prompted by Deleuze’s discussion of “reading with love,” we link the two to present how reading with love has been enacted in our work, both collective and individual, as transformative and intensive. The feminist philosopher Elizabeth Grosz, and her own readings of Deleuze and Foucault, prompts us to envisage what it is to think like a feminist and read with love after the ontological turn. As ontological, reading is neither consumption nor the acquisition of knowledge but an act of creation, an act of freedom, an act of love.