(Self)portrait of the theorist as a female reader in the essays of Judith Schlanger

Abstract

Starting from the observation that Judith Schlanger most often appears as a female reader in her essays on literature, this article attempts to identify the implications of this self-portrait in a theoretical body of work that cannot, however, be approached from a feminist perspective. Its aim is to show that the figurations of the reader(s) echo the major categories of the essayist’s work (in particular the tensions between fullness and absence, absolute and finitude) and discreetly propose a form of generic feminine. More broadly, by restoring autonomy and indeterminacy to the female reader, Judith Schlanger overturns a long-stereotyped vision of this figure.