A BOOK AND READING AS FORMS OF CULTURAL MEMORY PRODUCTION

Abstract

This article studies various theories describing a reader as a recipient or prescribing a reader a certain way of reading, and reviles them as anthropotechnics forming such abilities or competences as empathy, reflection, self-discipline. As a result active and passive reading types are discovered and two vectors are established: work at self-improvement to produce a text and work at text to produce one’s own self. Articulating passions and desires, a person subordinates them to socially important codes and standards; constructing himself as a subject of reading, a person produces cultural memory, and thus becomes a public, civilized being. This leads to the conclusion that it is necessary to preserve the skill of reading in contemporary time of media technologies.

Keywords

• reading
• text
• reader model
• technology of the self
• anthropotechnics
• cultural memory
• media