Dominik Zechner, an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University, discusses his new book, examining the unsettling dynamics of reading. He explores how literature can evoke 'linguistic pain,' revealing the breakdown between language and reality. The conversation delves into the intersection of violence and reading, touching on writers like Kafka and Proust, and the influence of modern technologies, like AI, on reading practices. Zechner also scrutinizes how reading embodies transformations, potentially mirroring forms of implicit violence.
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Zechner's Reading Habits
Dominik Zechner finds reading for fun alien because he always thinks pedagogically about texts.
He enjoys listening to others read since it allows him to experience literature without note-taking.
insights INSIGHT
Concept-Driven Book Structure
Zechner structures his book by concepts, not by authors, clustering diverse authors around key ideas.
This method allows for a richer, more compelling exploration of themes across genres and disciplines.
insights INSIGHT
Linguistic Pain and Reading
Language and pain interact as linguistic pain where language's representational function collapses under pain.
Reading produces a transcendental pain that is a rupture between linguistic and phenomenal reality, linked to the sublime.
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Swann's Way is the first part of Marcel Proust's seven-volume masterpiece, 'In Search of Lost Time'. It introduces the narrator's childhood memories and his fascination with the life of Charles Swann, a family friend. The novel delves into the complexities of love and jealousy through Swann's relationship with Odette de Crécy, while also exploring the narrator's own experiences and reflections on art and society.
In Search of Lost Time
Swann's Way
Stephane Heuet
Marcel Proust
This graphic adaptation of Marcel Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time' presents the first volume, 'Swann's Way', in a compressed and visually engaging format. The adaptation, likened to a 'piano reduction of an orchestral score', retains the fundamental architecture and themes of Proust’s work, including time, art, and the elusiveness of memory. Stéphane Heuet's detailed illustrations bring to life the narrator Marcel's childhood memories in Combray, capturing the humor, wit, and memorable characters of Proust's original text. This adaptation is designed to make Proust's work more accessible while maintaining its essence and beauty[3][5][4].
The Confusions of Young Törles
The Confusions of Young Törles
Robert Musil
The Body and Pain
The Body and Pain
Elaine Scarry
Venus in Furs
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's "Venus in Furs" is a novella that explores themes of dominance, submission, and sexual power dynamics. Published in 1870, the story follows the relationship between Severin, a man who enjoys being dominated, and Wanda, a woman who wields considerable power over him. The novella's exploration of masochism and sadomasochism is groundbreaking for its time, and it has had a lasting impact on literature and psychology. The complex relationship between Severin and Wanda is central to the narrative, highlighting the psychological and emotional aspects of their interactions. The book's influence extends beyond its literary merit, as the term "masochism" is derived from the author's name.
The critique of practical reason
The critique of practical reason
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant's "Critique of Practical Reason" complements his "Critique of Pure Reason," shifting focus from theoretical knowledge to practical reason and morality. Here, Kant introduces the categorical imperative, a central concept in deontological ethics. He argues that moral actions are those performed out of duty, guided by universalizable maxims. The work explores the relationship between freedom, morality, and the possibility of a moral law. It significantly influenced ethical theory and continues to be a subject of intense philosophical discussion. Kant's exploration of practical reason remains a cornerstone of modern ethical thought.
The Violence of Reading: Literature and Philosophy at the Threshold of Pain(Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) expounds the scene of reading as one that produces an overwhelmed body exposed to uncontainable forms of violence. The book argues that the act of reading induces a representational instability that causes the referential function of language to collapse. This breakdown releases a type of "linguistic pain" (Scarry; Butler; Hamacher) that indicates a constitutive wounding of the reading body. The wound of language marks a rupture between linguistic reality and the phenomenal world. Exploring this rupture in various ways, the book brings together texts and genres from diverse traditions and offers close examinations of the rhetoric of masochism (Sacher-Masoch; Deleuze), the relation between reading and abuse (Nietzsche; Proust; Jelinek), the sublime experience of reading (Kant; Kafka; de Man), the "novel of the institution" (Musil; Campe), and literary suicide (Bachmann; Berryman; Okkervil River).
Dominik Zechner is currently an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University.
New Books in Critical Theory 
