Illegibility: Reading and Insecurity in History, Law and Government

摘要

The idea of ‘illegibility’ is familiar in literary theory through terms such as erasure, undecidability and the resistance of language or writing to interpretation, and in historical studies as a metaphor explicitly or implicitly shadowing the state’s attempts to render its citizens ‘legible’. But these are not the only ways to use its explanatory capacity. In this article I explore how we might return these insights to the more concrete and quotidian case of illegible writing: writing that literally cannot be read, and undecidable forms of handwriting that elude secure fixation and interpretation.