Rest! A Reflection

Despite the (still open) opportunity to handle older and rarer books, I remain confident that my time with Gallop! was immensely generative. The experience taught me to practice material studies and embodiment. This exercise was shaped by the network event of our class. Bonnie Mak has shown how the exclusion and surveillance strategies of special collections might produce distinctions of prestige and value, shaping how visitors perceive books and bodies “within and without” the archive (58-9). Certainly the access regulations, contracts, and physical exclusivity of the SDSU Special Collections and University Archives shaped how I handled my body and books in the space. But revelations in this space expanded beyond its limits. As I flipped, rotated, and listened to my toy book, I witnessed other students at their own tables gently nudging the pages of medieval codices and gingerly handling other rare books. I grew more comfortable with handling my book as I discovered material aspects to experiment with and investigate, eventually finding that I could only read and research Gallop! by “playing” it.

Watching students lean into their own selections to investigate marginalia, stains, and odors, I realized that we were all playing our books. I was reminded of our class collaboration in a previous visit to Special Collections, in which we worked in groups to investigate and bibliograph book selections. We had fallen into an energetic and focused curiosity, following traces across pages to evidentially imagine the history of our book. Each group member identified details and suggested ideas which excited and directed our collaborative study. In parallel play with other bodies in Special Collections, I realized the immediacy of our bodies as networked actors and the urgency of – while and when we can – moving mindfully in our shared network together.

Notes

[1] In 2003, Seder collaborated with the WGBH National Center for Accessible Media to create the “rear-window captioning system” for movie theaters (Seder 2003). This joint venture was a flawed attempt at inclusion – any project designed mainly to prevent “disrupting other [nondisabled] viewers’ experience” is necessarily delimiting and exclusionary – but it does indicate Seder’s awareness of disability and disabled in/access to media technology.

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