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"to apply a "hermeneutic of suspicion" is, I believe, widely understood as a mandatory injunction rather than a possibility among other possibilities" (4)I love how Sedgwick's writing opens the field for alternative ways of reading! "An affect theory is, among other things, a mode of selective scanning and amplification; for this reason, any affect theory risks being somewhat tautological, but because of its wide reach and rigorous exclusiveness, a strong theory risks being strongly tautological" (12)"What marks the paranoid impulse in these pages is, I would say, less the stress on re

“But I just have trouble getting interested in that….what would we know then that we don’t already know?”-Hmm, this kind of feels counterproductive. Just because we already know how awful something is (i.e., the prevailing influence of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy in this country), does not devalue learning or examining situations which further provide support for evidence of such theories. There is value in these experiences and learning and documenting.

Sedgwick’s (2003) writing on paranoia and reparative reading utilizes paranoia as a lens for developing critical theory. Like most of the readings from this week, Sedgwick uses Klein’s theories to develop critical theory beyond the psychoanalytic field.  “What does knowledge do—the pursuit of it, the having and exposing of it, the receiving again of knowledge of what one already knows? How, in short, is knowledge performative, and how best does one move among its causes and effects?” (124).

This sentence speaks volumes: "for someone to have an unmystified view of systemic oppression does not intrinsically or necessarily enjoin that person to any specific train of epistemological or narrative consequences" (127).In other words, if the injustice you face does not anger you, it does not mobilize you, but you have critical consciousness anyway--how do you explain that? How is that some people (academics, activists, philosophers, politicians, educators) get motivated onto a specific train of epistemological or narrative consequence?