Digital dystopianism as affirmation: Notes on the perpetual loose ends of scholarly reading

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss debates related to the nature of scholarly practices such as reading in the digital age, and how these are underpinned by a range of utopian and dystopian visions of the future of the university. Rather than summarily dismissing these visions as positing ‘unattainable elsewheres’ or as paradoxical forms of nostalgic alarmism that deny the reality of the present, I instead take seriously some of the values that both sides of the debate seek to preserve. In line with certain strands of contemporary utopian scholarship, utopianism here does not relate to a static future state, but rather a form of thinking that is fruitful in helping us make sense of what we value as scholarly practices in the university. Here, however, I focus on the idea of dystopianism as a mode of thought which performs a similar affirmative function. In the case of digital dystopianism in particular, I argue that what is affirmed is a sense of scholarly reading as positing perpetual loose ends, something that is nevertheless still possible in the digital age provided we subscribe to a more pluralistic understanding of what it means to read.