In the context of the proliferation of textuality in the new media age, and the changing demands of adequately analyzing it, Scheible’s essay explores the possibilities of a reading strategy that asks how we might take parentheses as starting points for critical thinking, looking across three primary media sites: Jacques Derrida’s writing, criticism of the televisual laugh track, and Miranda July’s 2005 film Me and You and Everyone We Know. Proposing we consider not only parentheses as textual marks but also “parentheticality” as a relational structure, Scheible’s essay weaves in and out of disciplinary boundaries and questions about the legacies of critical theory, comedy, sound, sexuality, independent filmmaking, and new media aesthetics.

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