Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky (1950-2009)

Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, or, You're So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay is About You

Durham and London

Duke University Press

2003

"In fact, it seems quite plausible that some version of this axiom (perhaps 'Even a paranoid can have enemies,' uttered by Henry Kissinger) is so indelibly inscribed in the brains of baby boomers that it offers us the continuing illusion of possessing a special insight into the epistemologies of enmity."

[...] One recent discussion of paranoia invokes "a popular maxim of the late 1960s: 'Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they are not out to get you'" (Adams 15). In fact, it seems quite plausible that some version of this axiom (perhaps "Even a paranoid can have enemies," uttered by Henry Kissinger) is so indelibly inscribed in the brains of baby boomers that it offers us the continuing illusion of possessing a special insight into the epistemologies of enmity. My impression, again, is that we are liable to produce this constative formulation as fiercely as if it had a self-evident imperative force: the notation that even paranoid people have enemies is wielded as if its absolutely necessary corollary were the injunction "so you can never be paranoid enough."
(p. 127)

Writing::Inscription

Reading

See "Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, or, You're So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay is About You," in Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Durham and London: Duke UP, 2003).

An earlier version of this text appeared as the introduction to Sedgwick's Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1995).

09/10/2014