ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describes Eve Sedgwick’s call for reparative reading of texts. With reference to insights gained from psychoanalysis, Sedgwick describes suspicious readings as ‘paranoid,’ as they seek to forestall unpleasant surprises in the text by pre-emptively seeking them. In contrast, a reparative reading aims to find what she terms ‘good surprises.’ Reparative reading seeks to discover places where power structures are challenged, subverted, or transcended. Jennifer Knust’s critique of Sedgwick is also discussed. Knust attempts a reparative reading of the curse of Ham in Genesis and concludes that the only appopriate reading is suspicious. She therefore offers some cautions around the use of reparative readings, which are incorporated into the author’s methodology. In the second half of the chapter, Phyllis Trible’s reading of Judges 19 is considered. Trible’s approach, while self-consciously suspicious, actually contains a number of reparative features. In particular, she uses the text to address the modern audience, calling for repentance and action towards those existing within modern situations which would parallel the ancient situation faced by the Levite’s wife. Trible is seeking to establish a sort of textual memoriam, which could be considered partly reparative.
