Week 12: Archival Theory

Posted on by
1

The archive is a place for authors to say they were ‘here,’ alive in a certain time in history and creators of work that reflected that exact time and their lived experiences in it. During their life time an author may not be able to publish all or any of their works, who they were, what they thought, disappears a few years after their deaths and cannot be retrieved in the future unless properly archived and saved. Unfortunately, not all works are destined for the archive, many do not get added to archival collections, or if they do, they time to process them is long and waiting. Because of this some authors, particularly African American authors as mentioned by Jean-Christophe Cloutier in, The Lifecycles of Twentieth Century African American Literary Papers, have made their own archives, ones to preserve their works and ideas similar to how any institutional archive might.

Their archives would keeps safe their works and thoughts, sometimes even providing the “train of thought” or work process to develop them by preserving documents besides a finished product. An authors archive even went beyond what an institutional archive would display, they would, “becomes a site where an author’s hidden identities, affiliations, and political ambivalences and fantasies,” could be kept, even if they would typically be determined, “difficult, messy, shameful, or inchoate for public presentation.” (Cloutier, 9-10). When creating their works these authors knew that their books could be published, but had to prepare for the possibility that they would not be archived and preserved as valuable. However instead of accepting that possibility and future those authors followed a “desperately human desire” to “fill that unfillable space” (19), by carving out and ensuring and time proof location and place for their words.

I have thought at times of making my own archive like this as well, collecting and organizing all my saved essays and assignments in folders and boxes for safe keeping. My archive would not be made with the expectation that it would ever end up in a collective archive, but with the hope that if a family member within a coming generation were to ever receive it that I, my work, would be remembered and re-read.

Just Remember…

Posted on by
1

We have talked about books and what they mean and signify through bibliography. We have analyzed the physicality of books from the material of the cover and pages to the font styles. We have learned how to appreciate what we see AS a book rather than IN a book. However, how does all of this information from this media transition to our technological age? Remediation! Remediation is the answer to the Web, Facebook, Google, Kindle, and even the format of website designs. Everything originates from the remediation of books because, I don’t know if you know this but, books were a hit back in the day.

Yet, “bookishness” proves that they still matter. It is a form of preservation, expression, and identity. Being bookish is to identify with books in one way or another in an aesthetic sense. However, rather than recognizing books as media of knowledge, they are simply a way to express one’s interest or general aesthetic appeal with books. Therefore, someone could have a shelf of books and have never read a word on any page. Perhaps, these books provide a comfort and fill the empty spaces.

This form of identity powers change. As Dr. Pressman explains in her Bookishness, “Bookishness registers a sense of loss and promotes remembrance” (22). It is a history, a form of record-keeping, as bibliographers. Bookishness contributes to acknowledging lost history like a memorial. While most writers’ imprints on book history (and history in general, for that matter) has been lost or undocumented since we’ve began writing on stone, bookishness is another way to appreciate what we still don’t know. Whatever it may be, a scroll of paper or a scroll through one’s phone, it led us to the concept bookishness. While, yes, bookishness does contribute to the over-commodification of works of art and might take away from the uniqueness of originality, it also brings appreciation for that sense of originality in a digital age.

We are already moving on from simple technologies, which sparks fear in the humanities and society. The other day, I attended a Living Writers event here at SDSU and the author brought up the question of AI. She was not afraid of AI taking over her job because, however ‘intelligent’ AI might be, it has never lived through human experiences. It does not know the feeling of losing someone, it does not know how to brush its teeth (because it doesn’t have any!), it does not know what it means to be human. That is why, even in the face of a digital world, books are still here. Books are still important. Books are human history.

Take a Shelfie!

Posted on by
1

Reading Dr. Pressman’s Bookishness has tied everything taught and read over the semester up with a beautiful, perfect bow. While reading the chapter, it was cool to see all of the authors Dr. Pressman had mentioned and/or assigned for the class. Upon seeing the multitude of authors in the Introduction and Chapter 1 of Bookishness, it felt like this semester was a window into Dr. Pressman’s research process and mindset as she had set off to write a book, at first about the “death of the book,” and later became about “bookishness.”

I was intrigued by Dr. Pressman’s explanation and exploration of “shelfies,” which she explains are “a self-portrait in front of one’s bookshelves or a photograph of the books on one’s shelves” (pg 35). This “bookish version of the selfie” (pg 35) is one of many examples of the fetishization of books happening in the social media sphere. Dr. Pressman uses the example of selfies taken with a display of books in the back, which both fetishize the book and can be telling of a person’s outward persona. This concept has evolved to be included in video format from long YouTube video-essays to small clips on TikTok, shelfies remain a part of “digital self-making” (pg 35), just in a newer format. It is rare nowadays to find an “academic” YouTuber without books in their background to appeal to ethos. Yet, despite the dark wood that encases a multitude of books and spans the whole frame, plenty of these videos end up being lukewarm summaries of a situation, book, concept, etc. These disappointing interactions have made me realize how other modes of bookishness appear. Though we’ve looked at bookwork, novel books, artists’ books, books as clothing or jewelry, or more, I forgot that people can still fetishize a plain book. An excellent example that reminded me of this fact was Gatsby’s library of uncut books. People fetishized books then as they do now, but that fetishization has grown and spread into the digital, where everyone is constantly performing their ideal persona and trying to translate that into their reality. 

Bookishness – A Responce to a Culture in Transition.

Posted on by
2

Wow, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the first chapter of Jessica Pressman’s book Bookishness. I loved the words and all the wonderful pictures added for our viewing pleasure. It really helped to paint the picture of what bookishness truly is, a phenomenon of people fetishizing the look, feel, and idea of a book in the digital age, where we don’t need them anymore. Although the need might be gone, the want is still apparent. I loved how Pressman italicized these two words: Need and want. We dont need books anymore in our day-to-day lives, and this drastic change is what led to our even stronger want, desire, and fetishization for them.

It reminds me of why I love collecting CDs. I absolutely do not need my collection of CDs; I don’t even have a CD player in my car, and I can listen to all the same things on my iPhone, but it’s the physicality and the fetish of it. It feels more human to put in a CD or read a physical book.

These acts of going out of our way to use physical items such as books and CDs instead of relying on the digital feels nostalgic, and almost like a coping mechanism for how quickly our world became so digital. Pressman words it the best by saying, “Bookishness signals a culture in transition but also provides a solution to a dilemma of the contemporary literary age: how to maintain a commitment to the nearness, attachment, and affiliation that the book traditionally represented now that the use value of the book has so radically altered.” This quote is so verdant and robust with great language, such as the words; transition and radically altered. It honestly blew my mind reading this. That bookishness, in a way, acts as a response to a culture in transition, and this is so because the changes to the book have been so radically altered. Less than twenty years ago, books were the only means to read stories and novels. The first Amazon Kindle didn’t come out until 2007. Computers didn’t become necessary for school and home life until the 90’s and early 2000s. This all proves how shocking and quick our transition from physical to digital truly was, and we’re all still in shock and attempting to adjust. Bookishness is also, in a way, a fight and push back against the digital, our response to the attempted deletion of our beloved physical items. In all, I resonate with the term bookishness, and I will continue to be bookish as a way to push back against a fully digital age.

Living Writers Event with María Dolores Águila

Posted on by
Reply

At the most recent Living Writers event in the Love Library, I was able to listen to María Dolores Águila, a San Diego native, tell her story. She has published three books so far in children’ s literature and middle grade. During this event, she gave a back story to why she wrote her keynote novel, A Sea of Lemon Trees, and how it was centered on the Lemon Grove incident in San Diego. This was when a local school board tried to send Mexican students to a separate school in the 1930s. While this incident occurred almost 100 years ago, tensions still remain today in everyday life, especially with the rise in ICE arrests and deportations. While this issue has always been something society needs to fix, it has been increasingly relevant to address. In her novel in verse, Águila shares the life of Mexican American children who face the reality of segregation first-hand.

Águila gives some of her own story about how she was raised in a Mexican household with two parents who never went to college. They wanted Águila to have an education, to graduate high school and to find a job, but Águila struggled. As a child, she was passionate about writing, so much so that after reading The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, she copied every book by Cisneros from the library by hand. Her family didn’t have enough money to buy the books, so she rewrote them for herself. However, writing her own story was enough of a challenge, especially without a mentor to guide her. Soon enough she gave up her passion for writing, only for it to be reawakened after having children and graduating college with an Associates degree.

She wanted her children to follow their passions, but she recognized that, in order for them to feel encouraged to do so, she had to follow her own. Therefore, she picked up writing again, finding a community through online platforms like Twitter. There, she received feedback from other writers, attended critiques, and also found classes for workshopping. However, publishing was another obstacle to tackle. In 5 years, she received more than 60 rejections on her first book. Águila did not give up, and eventually got an agent who helped her to publish. She explains that, even after writing and publishing your first book, starting the process over again is not any easier. Each time is a new start, which makes you constantly have to learn processes for writing a story. 

I found Águila’s story really moving since I am an aspiring author myself. Sometimes, I have days when I am filled with creativity. Other days, I have nothing to write at all. During this event, Águila provided answers to overcoming such issues as a writer. Oftentimes, writers set themselves with long term goals rather than short term goals. As a solution, Águila suggests writers should set up a system of writing that works for them, where they at least write one thing each day. Whether it be a word, sentence, or chapter, writing is the only way to truly progress.

Week 12: Bookishness

Posted on by
2

Though I was unaware of the term to categorize my thoughts at the time, it was during my undergraduate years when I first began to recognize the phenomenon of bookishness when living with non-humanities students. As my roommate and I sat on the couch and finished the show, Daisy Jones & The Six, we went back and forth on how good the show was and wishing we could experience it for the first time again. Having read the book before it became a TV series adaptation, I offered her my copy to have the reading experience, to which she told me that she wasn’t “into books.” As she headed to her room, I took note of the decorative coffee table books stacked on her nightstand and the movie poster for Call Me By Your Name, another book to screen adaptation.

In a contemporary world sped up by the digital and self-proclaimed “nonreaders,” the book as an object may not carry the same prestige of its early days, but bookishness is alive and well. In reading the beginning of Bookishness: Loving Books in a Digital Age by our own Dr. Pressman, I took particular interest in the book as an active agent as it was described, “In this case, “bookishness” suggests an identity derived from a physical nearness to books, not just from the “reading” of them in the conventional sense. The ‘-ishness’ also indicates that objects rub off on us” (Pressman 10). As a culture, we are so deeply engrossed in storytelling and the book whether it be recreating it into visual formats, creating aesthetic objects inspired by it, or replicating it into digital formats. Though someone may not perform the action of reading, it is impossible to understand the full extent of how books have “rubbed off on us.” Whether it is of conscious choice, the book remains near to us whether through material object of the performance of cultural identity and aesthetic. I use my roommate as an example not to judge her personal commitments to literature, but to illuminate ways we experience bookishness in daily practice even if it’s on a subconscious level.

When we began this course, I had great anxiety that books were becoming obsolete. In the ways through which media has progressed in society, book usage dwindles in comparison to technology which most of us can not work, communicate, or leave our homes without. How greatly we rely on technology was just illuminated by the Amazon web browsers outage that prevented countless from work and school. Bookishness, however, gives me hope for the future of books as it has made me realize how deeply books are engrained in our culture that they will not die.

Halloween Costume: Book Worm!

Posted on by
Reply

The night before, I was sifting through my closet looking for ideas for my halloween costume. My original idea was to dress up as Dr. Pressman, but my wardrobe is not nearly as exciting as hers. I then began to sift through my notes and pictures of books that we have examined in our Special Collections Lab. I came across Liber de arte distulandi [sic] simplicia et composita: Das nüv Bůch der rechten Kunst zů distillieren is a collection of scientific work in German by Hieronymus Brunschwig. This old text had deep wormholes throughout the spine, both through the cover and the pages in between. I decided to recreate the wormholes with an old shirt that I had lying around. By cutting holes in the front and back of the shirt, I was able to mimic the wormholes in the pigskin cover of the Liber de arte distulandi [sic] simplicia et composita: Das nüv Bůch der rechten Kunst zů distillieren.

Institutions and Archives

Posted on by
3

Cloutier discusses the function of archives: “what capture really means is that a record’s information must be inscribed or seized in some kind of storage medium…this piece of paper then needs to be pulled into a records management system—which still requires a physical infrastructure—in order to be used and controlled” (8).

The organization of archives is political, influenced by the culture and systems of power that surround it. The organization of archives emphasizes the human touch and consideration involved in this ‘medium,” similar to the way the human touch is involved in all technological processes we might assume run themselves (book publishing, AI).

I’m currently in Dr. Y Howard’s trans and queer cultural studies class, and we’re having similar discussions about the limitations of archives. Last week, we read Andy Campbell’s Bound Together, specifically the chapter, “Yellow, or reading archives diagonally” in which Campbell observes that something like the Leather Archives and Museum is effected by social influences like stigma surrounding kink and BDSM. Due to this, people are less likely to donate possible archival material from deceased people who used to be in the leather community. With the limitations of the archive’s organization in mind, Campbell reads through the archives diagonally, creating his own methods of categorization (organizing by the color yellow in reference to the hanky code) in order to come to a different result than would have been available had he followed the normative or offered organization of the archive: “What emerges to return to Foucault’s comment, is not just a collection of objects, but a way of life, yielding… ‘intense relations not resembling those that are institutionalized'” (Campbell, 103).

Week 11: Digital Texts “Brought Back to Life”

Posted on by
4

In both Katherine Bode and Roger Osborne’s chapter “Book history from the archival record” and Jean-Christophe Cloutier’s introduction to Shadow Archives, the authors reveal that archives are never neutral spaces. Archives are shaped by the cultural values, power structures, and technological conditions of the eras in which books are produced and preserved. Bode and Osborne explain that a book exists far beyond its physical covers, arguing that “no book was ever bound by its covers” (220). By tracing the “book network cycle,” they highlight how the creation and circulation of a text passes through numerous stages and hands including writers, editors, printers, publishers, distributors, collectors, and archivists. Each of these agents plays a role in determining which works are preserved and recognized as culturally significant. Therefore, archives become curated reflections of dominant ideologies.

Cloutier also argues that archives reveal the values and exclusions of their historical moment, especially when examining African American literature. He describes African American archives as “shadow archives,” existing in the margins because mainstream institutions historically excluded or undervalued Black writers and cultural production (12). His metaphor of the archive as a “boomerang” suggests that texts may disappear from view but can return to relevance when cultural interests shift or when scholars retrieve and reinterpret neglected materials. In this way, Cloutier illustrates how archival life cycles are deeply tied to questions of race, access, and institutional power.Both Bode and Roger Osborne’s text and Cloutier’s introduction raise questions about whether “dead” texts can return to life. The idea feels especially relevant in the digital age. I started to think about our last class in the Digital Humanities Center. Amaranth Borsuk’s Between Page and Screen demonstrates how a work can temporarily “die” and then be brought back to life. For example, when Borsuk’s Between Page and Screen’s software aged out, her work could not be read or shared. However 5 years later,it was revived through technical migration to new platforms. This digital example parallels Cloutier’s boomerang metaphor because texts can fall out of circulation not only due to cultural exclusion but also technology that continues to evolve and update rapidly.

The ‘Talking’ Archive

Posted on by
3

When I was reading, “Book Histoy from the Archival Record,” by Katherine Bode and Robert Osborne, I was intrigued by how much information can be gleaned from archives. Within Bode and Osborne’s chapter they are adamant about conveying how archvies are able to tell so many stories beyond the content of the collection. For example neart the start of the chapter, they write, “Quite simply, achival research provides the principal way for book historialns to explore and understand the history and nature of authorship, publication, distribution, and reception of print culture.” They discuss the corresondence that happens between the people who are involved in bookmaking and how it can reveal so much about the context of the product or the book’s market. The letters can offer a lot of insight into the industry. Although archvies seem simple, merely collections of media used for remembrance or preservation, the can reveal so much more than that. The act of creating the archive is one of its most crucial aspects. Bode and Osborne write, “Most records have already undergone a process of ‘archiving’. Individuals make decisions about what documents they want to keep or discard… All archives are formed in relation the methods, rules and spacial limitations of their managers, whether the archivist is professional or ameteur.” This quote brought to mind the act of reading that we have discussed in class. Just as no two people can read the same way, there are no two archives that are identical. The thought and intention that goes into the archives are what makes them crucial to society. The archives provoke questions such as “who determines what is kept in or out of the archives?” or “why is the media worth preserving?” So many factors can be at play for this, including accessibility, time, space, and money. The items stored in an archive can say a million things about the owner or curator. Studying all aspects of the archive can reveal a lot about the archivist, society, and the content. After detailing these archival studies, Bode and Osborne write, “such studies as these draw attention to the content of archives by compiling rich and compelling narratives that make the archives ‘talk’.” The ‘talking’ archive was extremely fascinating to me because the media stored within the archives have a conversation with the ones who are studying it which leads to questions and ideas flowing back and forth between them.