The Ethics of Reading: Frictional Thoughts
From Waywords Studio Full Slate by Steve Chisnell
May 11, 2026 · 39 min
About this episode
This episode explores the ethics of reading and the implications of our reading habits in relation to empathy and consumption.
Is your reading just an “escape”?? Your favorite “escape” read might be a gated community for your conscience. Today, we interrogate the “Catharsis Commodity” and ask if our reading habits are just another layer of the Hideous Bargain. Explore the ethics of reading and the “Empathy Trap” in this look at the arguments of Suzanne Keen and Louise Rosenblatt. We expand the “Hideous Bargain” to include the very act of consuming this podcast and the literature it discusses. We ask if we are truly “walking away” from the bargain, or if we are merely co-authoring the child’s abuse through passive, frictionless consumption. Episode 6.34 – The Ethics of Reading: Frictional Thoughts Readings & Resources: Felski, Rita. The Limits of Critique , 2015. Keen, Suzanne. Empathy and the Novel , 2007. Nussbaum, Martha C. Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature , 1992. Rosenblatt, Louise M. The Reader, The Text, The Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work , 1978. Achebe, Chinua. Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays , 1989. Kutz, Eleanor, and Hephzibah Roskelly. An Unquiet Pedagogy…
People in this episode
Host: Steve Chisnell
Topics covered
- ethics of reading
- catharsis commodity
- empathy trap
- hideous bargain
- cognitive estrangement
- literary consumption
Keywords
- reading ethics
- catharsis
- empathy
- literature
- consumption
- cognitive estrangement
- hideous bargain
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: The Limits of Critique, Empathy and the Novel, Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature, The Reader, The Text, The Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work, Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays, An Unquiet Pedagogy: Transforming Practice in the English Classroom, Writers in Politics: Essays, Estrangement and Cognition
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