The Book: a World Transformed

The Book: A World Transformed Edited by Eduardo Portella With contributions by Rafael Argullol, Maurice Aymard, Zygmunt Bauman, Jean-Godefroy Bidima, Gerd Bornheim, Emmanuel Carneiro Leão, Milagros Del Corral, Francisco Delich, Barbara Freitag, Masahiro Hamashita, Georges B. Kutukdjian, Goretti Kyomuhendo, Gloria López Morales, Michel Maffesoli, Alberto Manguel, Sérgio Paulo Rouanet, Gianni Vattimo The Philosopher’s Library | UNESCO Publishing The book: a world transformed The book: a world transformed Edited by Eduardo Portella With contributions by Rafael Argullol, Maurice Aymard, Zygmunt Bauman, Jean-Godefroy Bidima, Gerd Bornheim, Emmanuel Carneiro Leão, Milagros del Corral, Francisco Delich, Barbara Freitag, Masahiro Hamashita, Georges B. Kutukdjian, Goretti Kyomuhendo, Gloria López Morales, Michel Maffesoli, Alberto Manguel, Sérgio Paulo Rouanet, Gianni Vattimo The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Published in 2001 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 7, place de Fontenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SP (France) Composed and printed by Imprimerie des PUF, F-41100 Vendôme ISBN 92-3103800-1 © UNESCO 2001 Preface The subject–object we readily identify as the book is nothing if not a qualified agent of historic transformation. It is difficult to believe that the ‘book civilization’, today called into question by Peter Sloterdijk, has embarked on its ultimate voyage. It is more likely that ‘Gutenberg’s Galaxy’ will endure and, with characteristic obstinacy, extend its journey further. To the adage of our Portuguese ancestors – ‘We must navigate’–Iamtempted to add: ‘with or without Internet’. ‘Internetization’ should neither frighten nor appease us. If we can be reasonably sure of one thing, it is that we have not yet spelled out ‘the end’ in the story of the book. We must hold in check the fundamentalist delusions, to say nothing of the penchants for relic- worship and apocalyptic forecasts. Books know that they live in a society both complex and simplifying, surrounded by dangers on all sides, assailed by market pressures and world impres- sions. This is what singles them out as deeply human – even too human, perhaps – and prey to the very suffering which comes with humanity. Books make available and protect the most visceral perceptions of the human adventure: memory, events, foreboding. The book brings together, in one and the same project, culture and learning: culture as non-formal learning, and learning as formal culture. Each educational effort or procedure passes or should pass through culture and, eventually, through books. Thus it has been in our societies, from the most ‘uninformed’ to the most progressively informed. And thus it should be more and more in the ‘informatized’ societies, devoted to the ‘digital gospel’ described by Hans Magnus Enzensberger. Hence the necessity of reading, and the urgency of dismantling the excluding devices of monolingualism. Reading as such would promptly convene a meeting of diverging alpha- bets, babelized words, the arduous liaisons all of us establish on a daily basis – our militant hope formed of coexisting memory and oblivion. Reading in the singular, as practised in the times of forced literacy, has yet to be rid of the authoritarian legacy and stigmas it bequeathed to our history. Reading against the current reveals itself as the freest of partnerships, a peculiar regime, under no rule but that of open con- tracts. This is when it reaches its most advanced stage, making of the reader a co- author. None of this could happen without the initiatives and complicity of citi- zen libraries. But great attention is needed. The power of libraries is a silent power. Libraries speak very softly. I would even say they speak in whispers, yet they make themselves heard. Within their walls, along their fluid corridors, persuasive ghosts and perplexed beings engage in deciphering the elusive human truths. Deeply aware of this was a former director of the National Library of Buenos Aires, Jorge Luis Borges, the inventor of languages who will be always at our side. Looking at a mirror at the entrance of his celebrated library, Borges refused the predominant notion of finitude. ‘I prefer to dream’, he said, and we repeat after him, ‘That polished surfaces represent and promise infinitude.’ Borges, el hacedor, el memorioso, taught us about books, about reading, about libraries. Eduardo Portella Introduction In the framework of an interdisciplinary research programme entitled, and aimed at highlighting, Pathways for Thought in the Third Millennium,1 this volume examines from various angles the role of books in different parts of the world If indeed books have influenced our perceptions, our ways of thinking and our behaviours, to what extent are these objects still involved in the construc- tion of our cultures today? Some might tag as ‘postliterate’ a global tendency that appears to oscillate between a sort of ‘hyper-literacy’ and a new type of ‘non- literacy’, evidently altering our experience of books and reading. The book still has much ground to break. Yet it is just where it appeared to be thriving the most that other channels have sprung, flowing with the lure of multimedium, immediate and interactive communication. Where does the book go from here? If absorbed into the World Wide Web, will it go into extinction or find a new vitality? Is the virtual book at odds with the real book? As uniform mass production gives way to a proliferation of limited series, the book has suffered, if not from critical shortages, at least from intense pro- fusion: ‘more titles, less circulation’. In either case, its plunge into cyber-space is seen by some as its salvation. If the web, emerging as a daunting bookstore, is snatching up the book, can it be said that a culture of books is asserting itself in the 1. See Chemins de la pensée: vers de nouveaux langages (Paris, UNESCO Publishing, 2000) in French and Spanish in the series ‘La Bibliothèque du Philosophe’. Forthcoming in English (2002) under the title Pathways into the Third Millennium: Toward New Languages. snarls of the super information highway? What will this limitless space make of the traditional compasses – editors who steer the readers’ way around written production, libraries that provide books in a human dimension? Are authors doomed to lose their rights, if not their existence? How does the book fit in with the ‘new nomadism’ that information tech- nologies are helping to spawn? Just as the virtual sphere promises to pave the way for an international citizenry, it threatens to further fragment the public arena. Some see it as an aimless, thoughtless, undiscerning Tower of Babel in reverse; others envision a web of freely shared knowledge and perceptions, reversing the chain of ‘production of relations’ and baring the way to ‘relations of production’, perhaps even drafting the book of tomorrow – if not the one that dispenses all knowledge, the one through which all cultures could, at last, converse. The question arises as to whether instant communication is bound to blur every instance of collective identity, to reiterate but a single message, or rather to aid the further expression of multiple identities, through the eventual development of such devices as automatic translation. For the time being, however, it is evident that the new ‘network society’ has been reproducing a world of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. Is the book an obsolescent pedagogical tool? Its contribution to reducing inequality, through the generalized education that it has made possible, cannot be doubted. In turn, the World Wide Web offers further access to education, bringing distance-learning nearer. But how can one thoughtfully read the Internet’s mush- rooming architecture; what is to be made of cyber-publication, at all times subject to alterations by its author and others alike? Preparing everyone to receive, select, edit and disseminate an infinite volume of information of uncertain origin is the chal- lenge that faces us. A similarly jagged and sinuous path can be traced if we take a critical look at the history of the book, bearing in mind its sometimes ambiguous performance on the democratic stage, from the infancy of silent reading, to the advent of free will and finally to the roots of modern society’s pervasive individualism. Individualism and ‘present-ism’, that lead to a search for autonomy, forgetting and immortality, creating a rupture with the past. It is thus opportune to compare the role of written expression with the persuasive power of the image and the force of the oral expression that Plato considered indispensable to genuine debate. Books have a way with words. They speak for and about us. We might live to see them affirm, to paraphrase the ironic tone of Mark Twain on reading his own obituary in a newspaper, that the reports of their death had been greatly exaggerated. Acknowledgements The idea of conducting at the ‘scene of the book’ an investigation into our cultures and societies, our ways of seeing, thinking and acting, was first suggested by Edu- ardo Portella, co-ordinator of the Pathways for Thought in the Third Millennium Steering Committee. And yet the dialogues and reflections of which this work is an extension would not have been possible without the support of a great library, namely the Biblioteca Nacional Foundation of Brazil, to UNESCO’s International Symposium, ‘Within Nations and Beyond: the Place of the Book’.1 This effort was also aided by the Organization for the Development of Science and Culture (ORDECC)/Colégio do Brasil, the journal Tempo Brasileiro, and the Brazilian Academy of Letters under the chairmanship of Tarcisio Padilha.

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