Reasons for close reading

The reason close readings make sense with the Arcades Project is that's exactly what the citational is: it relies on or is oriented toward, it has a worldview of, using what is already here or existent in the world, what has declared itself to be. That's the way in which it is generative. Citation takes what is already in the world and sees other worlds through whatever that is, it looks at how nominally 'other' things define a universe. This is a way to sidestep the compromised self, as least initially, if such a self exists, even as the full subjectivity of the self returns, and very obviously, in the act of reading, the act of imagining what is in front of one. But that's the basic move, to take what already exists, which is why it relates so well to curation (or non-curation), because it is a placing together, a pulling out of the flow, a showing that is a reading, a collection, a translation. How does one read the times, where we are, how does one tell an old story?