Anecdotes of an obsolete object, a thing astir called book

Abstract

What is a book? Perhaps the notion refers firstly to an articulate format: to a substantiv e amount of printed pages bound together. Y et it also presupposes an articulate discourse: these pages are bound together for a reason, they hav e a single organizing principle in the conceptual as in the material lev el. The order in which the pages are arranged corresponds to the gradual spinning out of an ov erall sense. Furthermore, this coherent material and discursiv e entity circulates in social worlds, becoming charged with different attributes according to contex t. A consistent sy mbolic role in a giv en time and place may lead a book to operate as the book, or at least allow the generic idea of the book to act as a constant mediation in our relationship with any particular v olume. Homi Bhabha, for ex ample, has described how "the English book" - a blanket reference to canonical Western tex ts such as The Bible - impacted the postcolonial contex ts in which it was introduced. A ccording to Bhabha, the English book is emblematic of original truth, whether it be the word of God, the entrance into history by way of the written record, or the univ ersal truths proclaimed by humanist literary traditions. A ll these truths tend to become reified by means of the foreign, imposed, printed tex t in contex ts of reception that hold different configurations of orality and writing