Interesting and insightful post. For what it's worth, I think that part of the prevalence of these "reading lists" may be that they serve (in part) as a means of providing certain people with a superficial gloss on the trendy issues of the day. So, for instance, just like it would be rather mortifying for a certain type of individual to mispronounce sopressata at an overpriced market, I think that some people feel like they need to have a glancing knowledge of few "essential" books discussing antisemitism, racism, criminal justice reform, etc. I doubt tons of people actually read the "5 essential books discussing prison abolition," but at least they know they can fake it a little by casually namedropping "Tanged up Blue," "Chokehold," or "Locked Up." (See I am guilty of doing this right now!! - I've glanced at those books because my wife has needed to read them for her work, but even though in reality I would not call myself an expert in any of these issues, I could probably "pass" as someone who is *very* interested in this topic if I ever felt the need to ward off a somewhat aggressive interloper during an awkward conversation). I may be speaking more for myself, but I do wonder to what extent these "reading lists" also serve this (admittedly cynical) purpose.
I also particularly wanted to flag this part of your essay: "Thinking about these things—not devoting your life to their study, not reading nothing about anything else ever, but educating yourself about injustices in your society and doing whatever is within your power to alleviate them—is, in my view, morally obligatory." I could not agree more with this sentiment, and I think that it provides yet another justification for reading fiction as well as nonfiction. I've noticed that most of these reading lists tend to be exclusively nonfiction, which is a pity because there are certainly many fictional works that can open one's eyes to injustices small-and-large. There are way too many examples for me to do justice here, but to name just a few idiosyncratic ones, I have found that when reading yet another nonfictional book about the Holocaust, you start to approach diminishing returns but then the way that Sebald obliquely discusses it in "Rings of Saturn" and Coetzee in "Elizabeth Costello" opened some new doors for me. I'm sure there are other (and perhaps better) examples of fictional works that can spur this type of critical thinking about social injustices. Part of the problem with including these types of works on these ubiquitous reading lists might be that, in my view, good fiction tends to a little more subtle with respect to these things, and subtlety is probably not necessarily suited for these types of reading lists. The advantage of subtlety is that when the reader can "get it" and internalize the author's message, I think that it provides a much more powerful response than a piece of writing that hits you over the head with the message. The obvious disadvantage with subtlety is that some readers miss it entirely (and I am by no means foolish enough to think that I've been able to recognize and internalize subtlety in all the works of fiction I read), and so if you are crafting a reading list to tackle racism, you will probably want to focus on nonfictional works where the chance of the message being lost or refracted is lower than fiction.
Great piece. Ending made me think of Simone Weil, need to read more of her! Think I’ll drop Twitter by month’s end. It’s been an embarrassment of riches thus far, but my coffer is full. Time to move on, perhaps.
I agree that there's something irksome about the term "doing philosophy." Whenever I see it, I always think, "Well, what's wrong with 'performing' philosophy?" Of course, thinking this leads to a neurotically repetitious cascade of thoughts concerning "performing" vs. "authenticity." Did we come up with "DOING philosophy" as an act somewhat more authentic than merely performing it? Linguists likely have a lot to say about this, as do stand-up philosophical comedians.
Were I still a bookseller, I'd have fun directing customers who come in with book lists to other books that didn't make the list.
Interesting and insightful post. For what it's worth, I think that part of the prevalence of these "reading lists" may be that they serve (in part) as a means of providing certain people with a superficial gloss on the trendy issues of the day. So, for instance, just like it would be rather mortifying for a certain type of individual to mispronounce sopressata at an overpriced market, I think that some people feel like they need to have a glancing knowledge of few "essential" books discussing antisemitism, racism, criminal justice reform, etc. I doubt tons of people actually read the "5 essential books discussing prison abolition," but at least they know they can fake it a little by casually namedropping "Tanged up Blue," "Chokehold," or "Locked Up." (See I am guilty of doing this right now!! - I've glanced at those books because my wife has needed to read them for her work, but even though in reality I would not call myself an expert in any of these issues, I could probably "pass" as someone who is *very* interested in this topic if I ever felt the need to ward off a somewhat aggressive interloper during an awkward conversation). I may be speaking more for myself, but I do wonder to what extent these "reading lists" also serve this (admittedly cynical) purpose.
I also particularly wanted to flag this part of your essay: "Thinking about these things—not devoting your life to their study, not reading nothing about anything else ever, but educating yourself about injustices in your society and doing whatever is within your power to alleviate them—is, in my view, morally obligatory." I could not agree more with this sentiment, and I think that it provides yet another justification for reading fiction as well as nonfiction. I've noticed that most of these reading lists tend to be exclusively nonfiction, which is a pity because there are certainly many fictional works that can open one's eyes to injustices small-and-large. There are way too many examples for me to do justice here, but to name just a few idiosyncratic ones, I have found that when reading yet another nonfictional book about the Holocaust, you start to approach diminishing returns but then the way that Sebald obliquely discusses it in "Rings of Saturn" and Coetzee in "Elizabeth Costello" opened some new doors for me. I'm sure there are other (and perhaps better) examples of fictional works that can spur this type of critical thinking about social injustices. Part of the problem with including these types of works on these ubiquitous reading lists might be that, in my view, good fiction tends to a little more subtle with respect to these things, and subtlety is probably not necessarily suited for these types of reading lists. The advantage of subtlety is that when the reader can "get it" and internalize the author's message, I think that it provides a much more powerful response than a piece of writing that hits you over the head with the message. The obvious disadvantage with subtlety is that some readers miss it entirely (and I am by no means foolish enough to think that I've been able to recognize and internalize subtlety in all the works of fiction I read), and so if you are crafting a reading list to tackle racism, you will probably want to focus on nonfictional works where the chance of the message being lost or refracted is lower than fiction.
Nailed it
Great piece. Ending made me think of Simone Weil, need to read more of her! Think I’ll drop Twitter by month’s end. It’s been an embarrassment of riches thus far, but my coffer is full. Time to move on, perhaps.
I agree that there's something irksome about the term "doing philosophy." Whenever I see it, I always think, "Well, what's wrong with 'performing' philosophy?" Of course, thinking this leads to a neurotically repetitious cascade of thoughts concerning "performing" vs. "authenticity." Did we come up with "DOING philosophy" as an act somewhat more authentic than merely performing it? Linguists likely have a lot to say about this, as do stand-up philosophical comedians.
Were I still a bookseller, I'd have fun directing customers who come in with book lists to other books that didn't make the list.