Reading Machines: On the Surface of Meaning – Beyond the Surface of Discourse

Ulrike Küchler

doi:10.1515/arcadia-2014-0003

Article

Reading Machines: On the Surface of Meaning – Beyond the Surface of Discourse

Ulrike Küchler

Published/Copyright: June 6, 2014

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From the journal arcadia Volume 49 Issue 1

Abstract

Reading machines are technological devices promising to support or even perfect processes of reading. Although the concept of reading machines is almost as old as the notion of writing machines, it has received far less attention in literary and cultural studies. The following essay addresses this gap. The first part of the argument links the reading machine to Freud’s definition of a tool. As a prosthesis connected to the human body and mind, a tool produces ‘trouble at times’: translation difficulties between the machine and its user affecting matters of materiality, discourse, and meaning alike. The reading machine embodies such ‘trouble at times’ that results from the paradox tension between machine and meaning. While the machine requires the mechanized processes to be unambiguous, the reading process is ambiguous by definition. Most of the reading machines invented in the past decades, do not take into account the trouble that results from such a tension: first and foremost, they serve to support reading processes mechanically. Yet, some of them stand out and hold a specific potential to stage such troubles and render the underlying tensions productive. The article discusses three of them, each of them focussing on a different aspect of the reading process: the first one is a ‘pedagogical reading machine’ (1767) concerned with the alphabetization process, the second one is an ‘aesthetic reading machine’ (1930) designed for reading literary texts, and the third one is a ‘critical reading machine’ (2007) that focuses on literary criticism.

Keywords: reading machine; literacy; enlightenment; modernism; postmodernism

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Published Online: 2014-6-6

Published in Print: 2014-6-1

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/arcadia-2014-0003

Keywords for this article

reading machine; literacy; enlightenment; modernism; postmodernism