Archives and Feelings

Paranoid and Reparative Reading (or, Are Your Paranoid?)

Megha Baikadi

September 10, 2013

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Sedgewick: “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading,

or,

You’re so Paranoid You Probably Think This Essay is About You”

“Even supposing we are ever so sure of all those things [every element of a conspiracy] … what would we know then that we do not already know?” (Patton, qtd Sedgewick, 123)

“Paranoia:

Paranoia is anticipatory

Paranoia is reflexive and mimetic

Paranoia is a strong theory

Paranoia is a theory of negative affects

Paranoia places its faith in negative exposure” (130)

So, what exactly is paranoid reading? How does each of us understand it (or not), use it (or not) in our reading, or what should we be doing with this information? One point that really should be underlined is that we might not only consider whether a fact (or a reading) is true or not and how can we prove it, but ask what does that knowledge do, what changes if we look for proof or expose it to the world, or find it again explained to us? How is knowledge performative? (123)

It is also interesting to think of the ways paranoia is both mandatory and self-contradictory. Using the imperative, as in “always historicize” or “question authority” (124) does interesting things to paranoia. The question is, why don’t we question the reason we are given the directive to be paranoid? Or, why does the ever suspicious paranoia never question the “obvious” solution of exposure as the cure to the very persecution we are to be so paranoid about, and what does that mean for hypervisible, not hidden, acts of abuse (139-40)?

“Learning [the axiom] “Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean you don’t have enemies” doesn’t actually make a paranoid imperative self evident. Instead of learning you can never be paranoid enough, someone may deduce that being paranoid is not an effective way to get rid of enemies” (127). A paranoid work (like The Novel and The Police by Miller) isn’t read according to Sedgewick) to find out if the premise is true, since the story moves circularly. Instead, it is read to explore many ways of meaning the same thing (135). So paranoid readings can be fun and exploratory, but maybe not so much effective in stopping the implied persecution? What do we think, do we agree, and what are we getting out of this possibility?

One of the key passages about the problem of (over) paranoid reading is that no topic can be declared a priori immune to prejudice, means that a paranoid reader must assume it exists because it can’t be ruled out (132). Looking at prejudice to be more dangerous if unanticipated than unchallenged might just mean that whatever prejudice is found, doesn’t effectively get countered. In fact, paranoia’s insistence on premeditating future negative possibilities actually doesn’t leave a lot of room (if any) for positive surprises, for things getting better, for hope (146). So once again, we’re back to the question: what good does the paranoid reading do? Where do we go with whatever we can learn from it? And what alternatives are there for us readers.

In the end, paranoia is an affect theory, and it remains one kind of strong affect theory among other kinds (133). So while paranoia deals with strong negative emotions like shame, and deals with Freud’s pain-avoiding theories (137), it doesn’t account for other kinds of strong emotions and their effects, like pleasure seeking. This hyper-focus on one affect, like the oldjoke on p 145 shows that the obsession with one emotion like shame might blind readers to the possibility of wanting other readings or emotions. Even the paranoid theorists might actually be using other ways of knowing, but the hyper-representation of paranoia might leave these methods actually practiced but under-reported (143). So what other kinds of affects, other kinds of emotions, can we read into or out of our texts? What other ways of knowing can we think about, or do we actually practice?

“Klein has the paranoid position always in an oscillatory context to a depressive one. The paranoid is a position of terrible alertness, but the depressive mitigates anxieties and can ‘repair’ the separated dangerous part-objects into a whole. This repaired object (or new whole object) can offer nourishment and comfort, and this is all part of the reparative process known as Love” (128). Ok, so Klein has a paranoid divisive position and a ‘depressive’ conciliatory one. Do we know how he defined these states and why they’re named what they are? Going back to the previous questions, how can we use this understanding in our readings?

“Isn’t it a feature of queer possibility – only a contingent possibility, but a real one, and one that in turn strengthens the force of contingency itself – that our generational relations don’t always proceed in this lockstep?” (147). If we are looking at the possibility of our identities as not necessarily linear, as Sedgewick’s example of three friendships which cannot, will not reflect each other in time, we can find immediate connection, being an overlapping part of the present (148).

So when we look at this kind of gender-performative cross-dressing, or camp, should we, or do we see it as demystifying, denaturalization and revealing imitation (138) or should we see it, as sedgewick describes it on p 149, as love? Are these possibilities contradictory, or can they be reconciled? How are we actually reading this practice, or these possibilities?

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