ABSTRACT
Future reading is foreign reading because it implies something about the people who encounter texts: they are not a predictable group, and they are not contained by one territory or ethnos. Future reading also implies something about the nature of the reader’s encounter: it is not unique, and it can’t be understood as “native” or natural. From the perspective of the future, the literary work is open-ended and ongoing. Insofar as the literature of the future will be written for translation, calculating its presence in many languages, and from translation, incorporating the trace, the influence, and the needs of other readers, future reading may have to be different reading, both technically and philosophically. Works of literature increasingly enter the world in several languages, originals and translations appearing at the same time or following each other closely.
