When you think of the term ‘performative reading,’ what do you picture? If you’re like me, it’s probably someone sitting in a coffee shop, wearing a chunky sweater, boots and wiry glasses, reading “The Bell Jar,” “Infinite Jest” or “The Metamorphosis, sipping matcha. The connotation is certainly not a positive one. The term “performative reading” has popped up in the last five or so years with the growth of celebrity book clubs and the influence of ‘BookTok.’ People are becoming inclined to signal that they read, and more importantly, have good taste, in the hopes of accruing social capital. This has gamified the practice of reading and, specifically, reading for pleasure, which is already precipitously declining among America’s youth.
So, as reading rates have continued to plummet over the last five years during the era of so-called “performative reading,” serious literature has been demonized as ‘performative.’ Our current cultural landscape assumes that social recognition is the primary motivation for reading altogether. In a culture dominated by short-form content, the very notion of “performative reading” has been taken and run with as the main incentive for reading. This has led one blogger to blatantly declare, “I wouldn’t date a man reading ‘Catcher in the Rye.’”
Why would we decry someone who wants to read a book at a time when people aren’t reading? It strikes me as remarkably counterintuitive to construe reading as a commodified token of status, because it takes an anti-intellectual culture as a foregone conclusion. The idea that someone reads only to show off their good taste is just a straw man created by a culture that is increasingly unread. If what we entertain ourselves with has a seemingly ever-growing influence on serious sociopolitical decisions, then we have all the more reason to promote rather than debase a mode of entertainment that increases human empathy at a time when that is progressively harder to come by.
Look, some people flip to one page of “Pride and Prejudice” and linger there as they nurse a latte, hoping their crush finds their ‘reading’ habits attractive. But the extent to which this concept has been adopted over the last five years online has blown it way out of proportion. Even if someone starts to read because they think it makes them more attractive, or because they think it will make them look cool, who cares? Isn’t that why people act, dress and behave certain ways anyway? Why does it matter why someone starts reading, so long as they’re doing it?
The main problem with ridiculing purely performative reading is that it may have a counterintuitive effect. The blogger who really hates “Catcher in the Rye” has a valid fear that our lack of media literacy means that men who read the book may “overly identify” with its proto-incel protagonist, Holden Caulfield. However, treating this misinterpretation as a foundational assumption is not only cynical but also a reductive way of thinking about reading. The implication is that because people have not been properly taught to interpret literature, we shouldn’t try at all.
I reject this notion. If an anti-intellectual culture has produced a somewhat illusory conception of the average reader — of which there are dwindling numbers — as more driven by social posturing than anything, what better way to combat it than to genuinely engage the literature people purport others to be reading performatively? Honest discussion of a book’s central ideas is the best way to avoid such straw men from popping up in the future. Weaponized incompetence on the part of a culture that lashes out at the first display of intellectual activity is not.
Discussion demystifies a text, presenting it as something anyone can engage with. These works are not always impossibly dense, rigorously academic objects of study. If it were this perceived barrier of entry that made it seem impossible to honestly discuss these works without being performative, then it is discussion that can help make reading feel more accessible. If schools did not teach us media literacy, the next best thing we can do is try to teach it to ourselves.
