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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 October 2021
This article pursues the reiteration of reading as a practice that circumscribes the work of the literary text. In doing so, it responds to particular assertions made in Kate Highman’s “Close(d) Reading and the ‘Potential Space’ of the Literature Classroom.” More pertinently, though, it seeks to reposition the value of reading as a vital attribute in engaging with the humanities and emphasizes that analyzing and the interpreting of the text is the practice indisputably central to the humanistic endeavor. The discussion reiterates that any ways in and through the text are available only by reading, making it necessary to encourage and inculcate it as a central objective so that the work of the text, in accordance with Attridge’s qualification of it, remains productive. Finally, it argues that situating this critical practice as a deliberate objective within the teaching of literature must be reprioritized as a matter of urgency.
1 Attridge, Derek, with Bayot, David Jonathan Y. and Guevara, Francisco Roman, In Conversation (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2015), 48 Google Scholar
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4 Said, Edward W., Humanism and Democratic Criticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), xvii.Google Scholar
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11 Said, “Criticism and Democracy,” 61.
12 Derek Attridge and Henry Staten, “Reading for the Obvious in Poetry: A Conversation,” World Picture Journal (Autumn 2008) (http://www.worldpicturejournal.com/WP_2/PDF%20Docs/Attridge%20&%20StatenPDF.pdf).
13 Attridge and Staten, “Reading for the Obvious in Poetry.”
14 Zoë Wicomb, “A Clearing in the Bush,” in You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town (Cape Town: Umuzi, [1987] 2008), 47–70. Although this is a volume of individual stories, a character who is often the first-person narrator in the stories recurs throughout. This character, named Frieda Shenton in the other stories, is the unnamed female student in the story cited here.
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17 Wicomb, “A Clearing in the Bush,” 52.
18 Wicomb, “A Clearing in the Bush,” 64.
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20 Wicomb, “A Clearing in the Bush,” 67–68.
21 The title of the story can be read as a striking allusion to the idea that the “bush” has been cleared to enable the “cultivation” of those deemed wild, primitive, and unsophisticated (see the rector’s reference to “barbarism”) in accordance with the racist and supremacist ideologies that formed the rationale for apartheid.
22 Highman, “Close(d) Reading and the ‘Potential Space’ of the Literature Classroom,” 283.
23 Highman, “Close(d) Reading and the ‘Potential Space’ of the Literature Classroom,”277.
24 Nortje, Arthur, quoted in Dirk Klopper, “Arthur Nortje: A Life Story,” in Arthur Nortje: Poet and South African: New Critical and Contextual Essays, eds. McLuckie, Craig and Tyner, Ross (Pretoria: Unisa Press, 2004), 10.Google Scholar
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38 Highman, “Close(d) Reading and the ‘Potential Space’ of the Literature Classroom,” 283.
39 Highman, “Close(d) Reading and the ‘Potential Space’ of the Literature Classroom,” 283.
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42 Highman, “Close(d) Reading and the ‘Potential Space’ of the Literature Classroom,” 276.
43 Highman, “Close(d) Reading and the ‘Potential Space’ of the Literature Classroom,” 275.
44 Highman, “Close(d) Reading and the ‘Potential Space’ of the Literature Classroom,” 279, italics in the original.
45 Derrida, “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” 369.
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50 Derrida, Of Grammatology, 158, italics in the original.
51 Derrida, Of Grammatology, 158.
52 Derrida, “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” 369.
53 Derrida, “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” 369–70.
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58 Patrick Cullinan, “The Passion: Western Cape. 1985,” in Escarpments: Poems 1973–2007 (Cape Town: Umuzi, 2008), 86–87.
59 The original context of this poem is more relevant to this discussion than it would be under more general circumstances. The poet was, at the time, a member of the staff of the Department of English at University of the Western Cape and the author of this article, one of the students referred to in the poem. The setting is thus the same as in the Wicomb story, only twenty years later.
60 Cullinan, “The Passion,” 86.
61 Cullinan, “The Passion,” 86.
62 Cullinan, “The Passion,” 87.
63 Cullinan, “The Passion,” 87.
64 Cullinan, “The Passion,” 87.
65 Cullinan, “The Passion,” 87.
66 Attridge and Staten, “Reading for the Obvious in Poetry.”
67 Cullinan, “The Passion,” 87.
68 Cullinan, “The Passion,” 87.
69 Cullinan, “The Passion,” 87.
70 Cullinan, “The Passion,” 86.