Reading as assemblage

Abstract

This interview study investigated academic readers’ reading practices using Deleuze and Guattari’s concept assemblage to produce language and images of reading that recognized the complex relations among texts, people, places, ideas, and memories. The following two questions propelled inquiry and analysis: 1) How do reading practices function as a force that assembles complex relations of texts, people, places, ideas, and memories in surprising and productive ways? 2) What alternative reading practices are possible by theorizing reading through these relationships? This inquiry specifically chronicled how the participants in this study used books to do things. Reading was not, therefore, a solitary, passive endeavor, but an active, social engagement in creating their worlds. The production of a list of prescriptive reading practices that others could duplicate was not the goal. Rather, Deleuze and Guattari’s (1980/1987) assemblage aligned within larger conversations among new criticism, reader response, and socio-cultural theories of reading. Specifically, Sumara’s (1996) theory of reading worked with the theories of Deleuze and Guattari to describe a wider variety of reading practices than are commonly found in school settings. Participants provided language to describe intensive reading, reading practices that altered subjectivity, and descriptions of surprising reading experiences. Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts and participants’ experiences produced descriptions of reading as an active, surprising, and productive practice.