Doing Seminar Reading

Ways and Detours of Reading/Not-Reading Seminar Texts and Papers as Actors

Abstract

Reading scholarly articles is a core practice in academic seminars, which proceed under the assumption that seminar participants have read assigned texts and will incorporate the knowledge acquired from these texts into seminar discussions and train reading techniques. However, this seemingly self-evident situation perhaps only represents an ideal rather than actual seminar practices. This Science and Technology Studies-oriented contribution based on qualitative empirical research (participant observation, self-study, short interviews, forum theater experiments) will show how, where, when, and why students and lecturers do read texts, and what tactics they use when they have not read the texts ‘properly’, ‘fully’, or at all. How do they perform reading/not-reading; how does reading/not-reading bias knowledge circulation? In this hybrid process of collective and individual reading, reading and discussing seem to be intertwined, and texts become effective as actors, for example as digital scans or piles of paper. Reading and text-based discussions are material knowledge practices that entangle and are entangled in hegemonial arrangements. My aim is to make visible and negotiable an often self-evidently accomplished performativity of collective and individual reading, in its concrete and diverse practices, in order to work productively with the epistemological and didactic consequences.