READING MODES

Justice. Being continually willing to admit that the other person is very different from what we read when he is in front of us (or when we think about him). Or rather, reading in him that he is certainly something different, perhaps something very different from what we read. Every being cries out silently, asking to be read in a different way. (Weil, 1994, pág. 98)

Philosophy, more than any other field of knowledge, penetrates the most diverse types of discourse and subjects them to its gaze. Cinema, comics, literature, video games, and quantum mechanics are all read philosophically. Nothing escapes its ability to subject knowledge to its perspective.

However, the reverse process rarely occurs. It is difficult to escape a reading about the validity and truth of the philosophical text, that is, its ability to show the world for what it really is, in its fundamentals. This level of approach to the philosophical text is, of course, indispensable, although insufficient.

One often has the impression that the philosophical work in our hands does not reveal the set of meanings it contains and that, in some way, it enjoys hiding behind its argumentative sophistry. For this reason, when necessary, we must hack into the text and penetrate its hidden codes.

We must use a cannibalistic strategy to hack into the text and allow the contained cry to escape from the throat eager to say what it does not want to say. The philosophical discourse will appear in its true dimension and allow us to understand it fully, even in its incongruous or very difficult to accept aspects. It is possible that in this process the clarity of belonging to the philosophical field will be lost, and other unexpected registers will appear.

In the type of readings proposed here, the cannibalistic hacking strategy consists of radically changing the status of philosophical texts, shifting the focus from validity and truth to their belonging to different spheres, such as the construction of formal systems or the approach to fictional spaces.

Before presenting cannibalistic hacks, it must be emphasized that alternative readings do not negate the need to subject philosophical discourses to confrontation with the order of truth through rational debate. In fact, this should be the first step; only if, after this reading, it is found that there is something that is not understood, that does not fit, that escapes the coherence of the text, will another way of reading it be sought.

Firstly, texts as symptoms. Reading Jean Baudrillard, especially his later texts, one feels confused. What is he really saying? Is it an accurate description of the extreme decadence of the West? What is he referring to specifically? The answers should not be evaded but rather sought in a profound dialogue with Baudrillard. (Baudrillard, 2009)

Even after this exercise in comprehension, there remains the feeling that something is escaping us and that the text continues to mock us with its juggling act of concepts that are difficult to grasp. At this point, I put forward the symptom hypothesis. Beyond its veritative structure, Baudrillard is a symptom. Suddenly, a new space for interpreting his discourse opens, leading from the question of the text's degree of validity to the field of the symptom.

Now the key question is: what is Baudrillard a symptom of? A symptom is neither true nor false. Fever, pain, anxiety are only indicating an underlying discomfort that causes them. Certainly, we have to describe the characteristics of the symptom as accurately as possible before looking for its causes or the hidden phenomena that are producing it.

As in Baudrillard's case, when faced with philosophical discourses whose immediate rationality escapes us, we will open up the possibility of treating them as symptoms of social or cultural discomforts that are much more hidden behind this type of conceptual elaboration.

Secondly, conceptual fictions. The field of literary fiction or visual arts has always been a fertile ground for philosophical reflection. Now let us reverse this situation. Can philosophical texts not be considered abstract fictions? Let us avoid thinking about philosophical reflections that take the form of novels. The question here is much more radical. It is being claimed that there are philosophical discourses that are in fact conceptual fictions.

Take the case of Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994). If the reading remains solely at the level of rational understanding of the text, it leads to a dead end, even to obvious dilemmas. In Chapter 4, Postulates of Linguistics, the end of representation is asserted. But this definitive closure of language as a sphere of meanings is achieved precisely by using representation, that is, a long disquisition to demonstrate its impossibility. This then leads to the representation of the end of representation, which is clearly nonsense.

I proceeded to read it as if it were a chapter from a science fiction novel. There is a world where its inhabitants do not represent reality through language, because their mere presence says everything that needs to be said, probably because they belong to a single mind and there is no need for language with its meanings.

In this way, the incongruous text becomes a metaphor for the communication problems that humanity is going through, which are shown through this conceptual fiction, which cannot be taken literally or questioned for its truth value, but rather for its ability to metaphorically express what is happening in the real world.

Thirdly, possibilistic systems. Some philosophical texts behave like mathematical or logical systems, whose reference to reality is not immediate. They are abstract devices that are valid insofar as they are self-contained and function deductively. For its part, physics returns to mathematics and asks itself which part, which theorem and which segment are useful for expressing the phenomena it is dealing with.

This situation applies to books such as Alfred North Whitehead's Process and Reality. This should not be taken as an ontology that describes the components of the world and its processes, but rather as a possibilistic system. One of its parts could serve to describe a specific sphere of reality. Thus, in certain clearly specified cases, it is valid to say that to be is to become.

This is not an exhaustive list, but it will be most useful for understanding certain philosophical texts. I imagine, for example, how to read Byung-Chul Han, since none of the above alternatives would work (Han, 2024). In this case, a way of reading must be found that is in keeping with the type of discourse. Thus, Han's writings can be taken as horoscope texts, which can be read by anyone at any time and will always say something seemingly relevant, due to their level of generality and ambiguity. The horoscope is always right, because the person reading it makes it always right. As for Heidegger, it is inevitable to think that his writing is an act of bad faith, in the Sartrean sense of the term.(Sartre, 1993)

This exercise of applying different modes of reading to philosophical texts in order to understand them properly is not innocent; on the contrary, as Simone Weil points out, when we read, we are also read, interpreted and challenged by the discourses of others. Reading philosophical work, regardless of one's opinion of it, implies accepting dialogue with that school of thought and, despite efforts to control it, entering the logic of its reasoning in some way, even if only to contradict it. Writing from this Extreme West from which I am making these statements, the danger of slavery is present because I am forced to interpret myself according to the discourse of the other, which, in many cases, is the discourse of the master.

We read, but we are also read by another. Interference between both readings. Forcing someone to read themselves as others read them (slavery). Forcing others to read us as we read ourselves (conquest). Mechanism. Most of the time, a dialogue of the deaf. (Weil, 1994, p. 98)

In addition, there is the ethics of reading and the need to be fair to the texts we are subjecting to a particular reading. Weil's phrase is relevant here once again:

Who can boast that they will read fairly? (Weil, 1994, p. 98)

 

Bibliography

Baudrillard, J. (2009). ¿Por qué todo no ha desaparecido aún? . Buenos Aires: Libros del Zorzal.

Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1994). Mil mesetas . Madrid: Pre-Textos.

Han, B.-C. (2024). La sociedad del cansancio . Barcelona: Herder.

Sartre, J. P. (1993). El ser y la nada. Buenos Aires: Losada.

Weil, S. (1994). La gravedad y la gracia. Madrid: Trotta.

Whitehead, A. N. (1956). Proceso y realidad. Buenos Aires: Losada.