Separating Metahaven and Vishmidt’s (2010) “intro riff” text into different topics and creating a diagram-view helped me understand the content by making its structure apparent. The way I mapped the text, with extra space between its fragments in each subject, and the end of one excerpt aligned with the beggining of the following in the next column, creates two possible reading orders. A linear one in relation to the original text is achieved by switching from column to column, and the other option is to read one entire subject column at a time before proceeding to another topic, a linear alterative in relation to the map itself. The first reading method is closer to the traditional way, the one intended by the editors, and the second one is useful for diving more deeply into one of the topics.
Coming up with or extracting themes from an original work is an active approach to reading that moves it closer to writting. Recataloguing the parts of a text into new arrangements is a form of writing, or rewriting. This method not only shows the main topics within a text, but it can also reveal what lacks in it. The category “events”, for instance, has only two entries.
I applied a more traditional method of writing when I isolated key ideas from the text in my own writing. Selecting these concepts and summarizing them is a form of reconceptualizing that provides an extra engagement with the content and opens up new possibilities and interpretations.
Not only my interpretation of the concepts present in the text, but also the structure mapping and the categories I used were active choices of mine. They worked for me, but other people doing the same exercise would use distinct strategies, and they would all be different from the editors’. A choice of structure is a choice, even the one printed on the book. It may be official, but not universal. It isn’t the best arrangement for every single reader.
In conclusion, recategorizing and reconceptualizing, which are also rewriting methods, are forms of deeply engaging with a text and creating new knowledge from it.
Reference list
Metahaven, Vishmidt, M. (ed.) (2010) Uncorporate Identity. Zurich: Lars Müller Publishers.
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