The demon of reading. reflections on the reading experience

This article takes as its starting point Sartre's interpretation of the reading experience as an appeal to our freedom and our existence as a unique project, which can take shape through our imagination. However, this view largely ignores our bodily involvement in the reading process, which runs off with this very freedom. A Lacanian approach of the fantasy could be more useful to conceptualise this involvement, but psychoanalysis has an all-too negative view of the imaginary that is aroused by the interaction between the reader's fantasy and the text. A possible synthesis can be found in Foucault's notion of the demon, referring to the imaginary double which confronts us both with the repetition of our fantasies in the act of reading and with the chance to change ourselves through this very repetition. Foucault's research into the classical technique of the hypomnemata ultimately allows us to integrate this 'demonic' involvement in a contemporary reading praxis.