Surface Reading: An Introduction

• Published in: Representations (Berkeley, Calif.) Vol. 108; no. 1; pp. 1 - 21
• Main Authors: Best, Stephen, Marcus, Sharon
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berkeley University of California Press 01.11.2009; University of California Press Books Division
• Subjects: Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund (1903-1969); Archives; Conferences; Critics; Essays; Formalist art; Friendship; Heroism; Ideology; Literary criticism; Literary history; Literature; Marxism; Poetry; Political activism; Political theory; Psychoanalysis; Psychology; Reading; School closures; Textual criticism; Unconscious mind
• ISSN: 0734-6018; 1533-855X
• DOI: 10.1525/rep.2009.108.1.1

In the text-based disciplines, psychoanalysis and Marxism have had a major influence on how we read, and this has been expressed most consistently in the practice of symptomatic reading, a mode of interpretation that assumes that a text's truest meaning lies in what it does not say, describes textual surfaces as superfluous, and seeks to unmask hidden meanings. For symptomatic readers, texts possess meanings that are veiled, latent, all but absent if it were not for their irrepressible and recurring symptoms. Noting the recent trend away from ideological demystification, this essay proposes various modes of "surface reading" that together strive to accurately depict the truth to which a text bears witness. Surface reading broadens the scope of critique to include the kinds of interpretive activity that seek to understand the complexity of literary surfaces---surfaces that have been rendered invisible by symptomatic reading.