The Dark Side of Literacy by Benjamin Bennett - 9780823229161

The Dark Side of LiteracyLiterature and Learning not to Read\nAuthor(s): Benjamin Bennett\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Fordham University Press, United States\nImprint: Fordham University Press\nISBN-13: 9780823229161, 978-0823229161\nSynopsis\nReading is good for us. The reading of literature, we are told, enlarges our horizons, extends our experience beyond our own lives. But the moral and political dangers that attend the association of reading with experience have long been understood. And is that association even valid? What if precisely our most important literary texts are constructed so as to challenge or disrupt it? \n This book is a radical criticism of the concept of \""reading,\"" especially of the concept of \""the\"" reader, as commonly used in literary criticism. Bennett starts with the point that \""reading\"" does not name a single, identifiable type of experience or class of experiences. Her then sketches in broad terms the historical provenance of \""the\"" reader, in.