Returning Thirds: On Reading Literature

This dissertation is a theoretical essay on reading literature that is at the same time an exercise in reading. It does not seek to provide a theory of reading that describes and develops the different phases and parts of the reading process and the relative value and meaning of the different instances relevant for that process, that is, a theory of reading in the sense in which that theory was conceived from the 1960s to the 1980s or so. Rather, it approaches reading as a practice that already contains its own theory that can then be extracted from it and developed only by reading. As a consequence, the dissertation seeks both to say (theoretically) what kind of a relation reading is through particular readings and to show what reading is by providing one example of a singular itinerary of reading, which consists of the chapters that make up the dissertation. The main theoretical point the dissertation makes about reading is that reading is a porous and sedimented process based on figuration, which prevents it from ever reaching completion and thus necessitates a repetition of reading, a return (with a difference) to the site of reading. This figuration, the figural in the relation of reading, is what is called the third.