When the attempt to translate something into sound and meaning fails or is only partially successful, it is usually called 'illegible'. It can be frustrating to be confronted with indecipherable graphisms or potentially crackable codes, defaced writing or text that remains incomprehensible. But it can also prove highly productive, for it is precisely the unfulfilled expectation of legibility that enables new ways of thinking about reading itself. Illegibilities Reflecting Reading sounds out reading as an aesthetic, semiotic and epistemic practice by focusing on its limits. By engaging with experiences of illegibility, the essays in this volume reflect on reading, for example, as an interaction between body and artefact, as an exercise in attention, as a dominant mode in Western knowledge cultures, or as a metaphor for understanding the world.

Illegibilities Reflecting Reading.
Barbara Bausch, Jessica Barr, Charlotte Coch, Ulrike Draesner, Sharon Howe, Angélica Freitas, Raisa Inocêncio Ferreira Lima, Elias Kreuzmair, Karolin Meunier, Michael T. Taussig, Nhã Thuyên, Kinga Tóth, Sarah Bro Trasmundi

Textem, 2025

con·stel·la·tions 03

170 x 225 mm, 128 pp. English & German
Design: Bernd Grether

ISBN: 978-3-86485-341-8