The Brooklyn Rail

MAY 2022

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MAY 2022 Issue
Critics Page

Interspecies Efforts at Close Reading

In 2021, while being interviewed for a story in Art in America, the writer mentioned a paper by Jane Gallop entitled “The Ethics of Reading: Close Encounters” (2000). After the interview, I printed the essay from my home Xerox machine and set it aside. A few days later, while going through my weekly readings, I noticed a smashed bug! It seems that it crawled into my printer and became part of the text itself. A new composition emerged: a smashed bug whose expelled bits and wildly distributed printer toner obscure the original text. With this highly textured new text, we are reminded that a text is never finished. The substrate, the paper, can hold annotations, emendations, evolving textures, and glitches.

Contributor

Kameelah Janan Rasheed

Kameelah Janan Rasheed is a learner. Currently based in Brooklyn, NY, she was born and raised in East Palo Alto, CA.

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The Brooklyn Rail

MAY 2022

All Issues