CONTACT: pfeijo@berkeley.edu, caleb_murraybozeman@berkeley.edu, jaemin.yoo@berkeley.edu
The Death of the Author (DotA) is an experimental reading and writing group that aims to foster a different relation with theoretical texts, both as its readers and as its writers. Our meetings encompass a long process of slow reading of each text, and encourage deep engagement and discussion over canonical works of critical theory. The goal of this process is to open-up new ways of understanding works whose meanings have been ossified through academic convention, and to do so not only at the content-level, but also the affective one. We approach slow reading as a decolonial process, one that destabilizes imposed structures of academic production. In reading texts that investigate not only intersecting systems of oppression but also the possibilities of alternative imaginaries, this group centers questions of race and gender as a critical site of theory for the past, present, and future. Our meetings serve as a space to bring together students and faculty across disciplines in an effort to rethink our relation to academic pressure, reconnect with different modes of textual engagement, and consider the criticality of our own writing processes.