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Abstract
Sensitivity reading (SR) is the practice of reviewing advance manuscripts for inaccuracies in their portrayal of marginalized persons. Proponents of SR maintain that the practice is robustly ameliorative, helping authors to craft accurate and responsible depictions of historically underrepresented populations. Some critics, on the other hand, have suggested that SR constitutes censorship because it alters works of fiction so as to make them more politically palatable. The contemporary debate surrounding SR is (or ought to be) of concern to librarians, given their ethical commitment to upholding the principles of intellectual freedom. In order to discern whether librarians' opposition to censorship ought to extend to the practice of SR, I ask in this paper whether sensitivity reading is in fact censorious. Following a brief explication of library censorship, I formulate an account of SR that draws on the testimony of practitioners as well as theoretical insights originating in feminist aesthetics and standpoint epistemology. SR, I argue, is a kind of specialized editing in which practitioners review texts from privileged standpoints that allow them to better detect, critique, and emend aesthetic flaws arising from prejudice and perspectival limitations. While SR can impose constraints (broadly construed) on expression, these are not very restrictive and can be justified in much the same way as other editorial work aimed at improving manuscripts prior to publication. Thus, I conclude that the practice of SR is not a genuinely censorious one.
Introduction
Sensitivity reading (hereafter referred to as SR) is the practice of reviewing advance manuscripts for inaccuracies in their portrayal of marginalized per- sons. Sensitivity readers1-who are typically members of the social group(s) for which they read-identify and provide feedback to authors on representational flaws evident in the text.
Proponents of SR maintain that, in the context of a predominantly white, cis, straight, and non-disabled publishing industry (Low 2016), the practice is itself robustly ameliorative, helping authors to craft accurate and responsible depictions of historically underrepresented populations in literature (Douglass 2017; Clayton 2018; Flood 2018; Salerno 2018). Comparisons are often drawn between SR and other sorts of expert editorial work. Just as the author of a medical romance might seek out the opinion of a healthcare practitioner to ensure authenticity, advocates of SR maintain that authors writing crossculturally should...