Between Interest, Guilt, and Pleasure: Reading in and out of Academic Time

Centered on the experience of losing oneself while reading, this personal essay explores the relationship between academic time lost when reading for pleasure and academic pleasure lost when reading to maximize time. Emerging out of engagement with the work of Kathleen Stewart (2007), Donovan Schaefer (2022), Sara Ahmed (2010), Margaret Price (2011), and others, it asks: if we’re choosing this academic life out of interest, curiosity, and passion, why do we so often stifle our pleasure? Why do we try so hard to reel in the “ordinary affects” that draw us into unexpected places, encounters, and experiences of time (Stewart, 2007)? While answers like capitalism, neoliberalism, and university-as-business offer insight, none of these click—none satisfy the emotional longing behind this “why” (Schaefer, Wild Experiment, 2022). This essay aims to sit with the dissatisfaction.