Episode 002 Show Notes

The Hermeneutics of Suspicion- the idea that conscious experience and understanding should be approached with suspicion, because they are merely the surface. Beyond this surface lie causal forces that explain these conscious phenomena (definition paraphrased from Brian Leiter, University of Chicago: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=691002)

The Dominance of the Hermeneutics of Suspicion- this approach is often portrayed as a "mandatory injunction rather than a possibility among other possibilities" (Sedgwick 125). Because of this, other approaches tend to seem "naive, pious, or complaisant" (126). Revealing what is hidden does not necessarily lead to specific action; choosing a stance other than paranoid does not necessarily indicate a lack of awareness or understanding of oppression. 

Melanie Klein's Theory of Positions- Klein speaks in terms of positions, rather than stable personality types. 
Paranoid/Schizophrenic Position: characterized by hatred, envy, anxiety; it is a position of "terrible alertness to the dangers posed by the hateful and envious part-objects that one defensively projects into, carves out of, and ingests from the world around one" (128)
Depressive Position: a position that mitigates the anxiety of the Paranoid Position; the subject can only inhabit this position briefly, and is able to "assemble or 'repair' the murderous part-objects into something like a whole--though, I would emphasize, not necessarily like any pre-existing whole" (128). One of Klein's names for this process is love.

Sedgwick adapts this construction in order to talk about paranoid and reparative critical practices, not stable theoretical ideologies.

Important Point: Paranoid practices represent "a way, among other ways, of seeking, finding, and organizing knowledge. Paranoia knows some things well and other things poorly" (130). The point is not to eradicate paranoid critical practices altogether, but to explore other ways of knowing.

Characteristics of Paranoid Thinking
Paranoia is anticipatory.
Paranoia is reflexive and mimetic.
Paranoia is a strong theory (a term drawn from the work of Silvan Tomkins). 
Paranoia is a theory of negative affects.
Paranoia places its faith in exposure.

For more, see Eve Sedgwick's  "Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; Or, You're So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay Is About You." It is the fourth chapter of her book Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (published in 2003 by Duke University Press).

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