Third Text Reader

Reading the Reader is a curious business. For the simple reason that – without much in the way of additional work by the reader- we don’t know precisely what we are reading. Is this a compilation of newly-commissioned texts? Or is this a sort of ‘best bits’ culled from back issues of Third Text? All its texts are presented in a strange and decontextualised void. Heaven knows why each of its articles was not prefixed or appended with a simple summary indicating in which issue of the journal (if any) an original version of the article could be found. As it is, both the reader and the Reader are located in a bizarre historical vacuum – uncertain as to which arguments and opinions are new and which are being restated…

…Intriguingly, although the vast majority of contributors to this anthology are located within academic institutions, Araeen, the founding editor of Third Text, waxes lyrical in his disappointment at the perceived failings of ‘the academy’. One senses within the Third Text Reader a tension between the academic leanings and credentials of many of the contributors and Araeen’s love for good old-fashioned knockabout stuff aimed bluntly at attacking what he perceives as (art) establishment racism. And when he makes statements such as ‘We also realised that there would be resistance from the establishment, but we did not expect this from liberal institutions of the academy whose enlightened function we thought was the pursuit of knowledge and truth’, one yearns for some chapter and verse flesh on these rhetorical bones…

…Cubitt’s introduction contains some interesting notes. For example, he quotes a Uruguayan critic as arguing that ‘”while European writers could address their audiences without worrying about the marginal readers outside Europe”, writers from other regions of the world continue “to yearn for European readers and regard their reading as the true and authorizing one”’. We should however resist the impulse to consider Third Text as an outlet for writers whose origins lie beyond Europe. Third Text is after all the journal of choice for those slightly irritating white writers who just love coloured people and the things they get up to…

The above extracts are from a book review by Eddie Chambers, "Third Text [Reader]", Art Monthly, London, Number 263, February 2003: 41