The Ethics of Reading: Frictional Thoughts

Is your reading just an &#8220;escape&#8221;?? Your favorite &#8220;escape&#8221; read might be a gated community for your conscience. Today, we interrogate the &#8220;Catharsis Commodity&#8221; and ask if our reading habits are just another layer of the Hideous Bargain. Explore the ethics of reading and the &#8220;Empathy Trap&#8221; in this look at the arguments of Suzanne Keen and Louise Rosenblatt. We expand the &#8220;Hideous Bargain&#8221; to include the very act of consuming this podcast and the literature it discusses. We ask if we are truly &#8220;walking away&#8221; from the bargain, or if we are merely co-authoring the child’s abuse through passive, frictionless consumption. Episode 6.34 &#8211; The Ethics of Reading: Frictional Thoughts Readings &#38; Resources: Felski, Rita. The Limits of Critique, 2015. Keen, Suzanne. Empathy and the Novel, 2007. Nussbaum, Martha C. Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature, 1992. Rosenblatt, Louise M. The Reader, The Text, The Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work, 1978. Achebe, Chinua. Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays, 1989. Kutz, Eleanor, and Hephzibah Roskelly. An Unquiet Pedagogy: Transforming Practice in the English Classroom, 1991. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong&#8217;o. Writers in Politics: Essays, 1981. Suvin, Darko. &#8220;Estrangement and Cognition.&#8221; Strange Horizons, 2014. https://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/non-fiction/articles/estrangement-and-cognition/ Some Key Terms from this episode: Cognitive Estrangement: Intellectualizing emotional experience using new or unfamiliar concepts to force readers to critically examine and make connections to their lived reality.  Unquiet Pedagogy: An educational philosophy and practice that deliberately disrupts reader comfort by compelling learners to engage difference and to recognize the non-neutral nature of their learning. Transaction (Aesthetic Transaction): For Rosenblatt, the messy, active dialogue between the reader and the text where meaning is not passively received, but frictionally constructed by the reader. Frictional Reading: From Steve Chisnell, the act of slowing our reading to examine difference, to consider significance, and to carry that meaning-making to the larger world.  Listener’s Guide Reflection Questions The Nature of the Escape: When you reach for a book to &#8220;hide from the world,&#8221; what specific &#8220;outside&#8221; noise or responsibility are you most afraid will follow you into the garden? The Transaction of Tears: If you could no longer use a character’s suffering as a &#8220;pressure-release valve&#8221; for your own emotions, how would your choice of what to read change? The Cognitive Friction: Why does the prospect of &#8220;not thinking&#8221;—even for a moment during a leisure activity—feel like a luxury rather than a surrender of your humanity? The Path to Praxis: If the energy from your next &#8220;frictional&#8221; read had to be used to &#8220;Write Back&#8221; to the world, what is the first letter, essay, or conversation you would be compelled to start? Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/ CHAPTERS 00:00    The Walled Garden of Consumption 08:28     Intro Theme 09:05     The Empathy Trap 19:14     Empathy Traps Undone 22:44     Social Action? 27:04     Educators and Narrative Complicity 32:18     Civic Acts 37:15     Closing Credits   === Transcript and Bibliography:  <a href="https://waywordsstudio.com/general/tr