Despite the proliferation of critical engagements with theories of reading by scholars of literary studies, it seems fair to say that relatively little has changed since Paul de Man claimed, “the resistance to theory is in fact a resistance to reading, a resistance that is perhaps at its most effective, in contemporary studies, in the methodologies that call themselves theories of reading but nevertheless avoid the function they claim as their object” (The Resistance to Theory 15). This panel asks, is this resistance brought to a theory of reading, as if from “the outside,” or is resistance internal to any theory of reading? In what ways does reading generate and/or depend on its own resistances?