Reading as Transdisciplinary Art

So to start the way back, here's a post from last year I inadvertantly left in draft form...

The art of reading, of deep analytical and critical reading, is increasingly a counter-cultural act. In a world addicted to instant gratification, immediate production, and the visual form, to group processes, collaborative work spaces, and video conferencing, the solitary, disciplined and reflective act of reading is one for which we are both poorly attuned and hardly prepared. 

To embark on a plan of close, diligent and demanding reading, to isolate oneself in individual, unseen effort, without  plan for immediate presentation of the fruits of one's efforts, is to partake in an action for which there is little social recognition or reward. In short, it is to set one's self apart from the mainstream, from the culture of making, and to enter the swirling side pool, the culture of reflection.

Now such contemplative reading can then (and often does) emerge into the contemporary world as productive, collaborative work, and one of the signs of the lack of such close reading is all the instant analysis and frothing blather that dominates our electronically mediated discourses. Reading as a transdisciplinary art demands discipline, patience, and moving againt the tides, all good reasons for reviving and deveoping the practice in ourselves and our students.