S&P or (Reading Suriyan Panlay’s Young Adult Criticism on Intertextuality)

Abstract

           The purpose of the article is to read Suriyan Panlay’s “I am Precious/I Am Girl/I Am Black: Intertextuality in African American Children’s and Young Adult Literature” (2015), criticizing his politicalization and mythologization of reading and textuality. Even though Panlay’s study focuses on African American young adult literature, the readers and intertextuality, the reading of Panlay emphasizes the concept of reading and intertextuality. On the contrary to Panlay’s argument about intertextuality, intertextuality is where it is not. It de-nominates itself. The binary opposition between motivated and unmotivated Signifyin(g), as seen in Panlay’s work, is problematic because the praising, rewriting, parody of a text is not intertextuality (but it is there as a punctum) – the intent of the author turns a text in to work in a strict Barthesean sense of the word. Also, reading as such does not split the readers into two groups as Panlay argued. Because misreading is the “only right way” to read, there is no such thing as mature readers and inexperienced readers. Reading is a space where a void is created: one does not have to focus on the text at all as long as one is in the instant of reading.