Learning to Read with Samuel Weber

Abstract: This article seeks to characterize, describe and analyze Samuel Weber’s reading method. Weber’s attention to details—be they philological, rhetorical, semantic, semiotic, or other—is remarkably specific. Weber’s reading method by no means applies only to literary texts. The category of what Samuel Weber calls the “literary” exceeds by far the mere genre of fiction, or even what most people would be tempted to call “literature.” Weber’s passion for jokes and Witz is emblematic of his engagement with the literary. Jokes are immediately unreadable: they seem to inhibit the faculty of reading. However, jokes endlessly and precisely challenge the so-called faculty of reading. The joke operates like a text whose intelligibility is barred and yet elicits violent effects.