Printing press

The Printing Press as an Agent of Change

CCR 633 ::: 2/15 - 2/17/11

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Last week’s reading


Scriptoria


limited access


institutional barriers


speed of handcraft


Google Scholar: 11,200Thursday, February 17, 2011

Academic Appointments

• American University

• University of Michigan

• Alice Freeman Palmer Prof. of History

• Emeritus

• LOC Consultant, History of the Book

• Visiting Prof., Wolfson College, Oxford


Humanities Fellowship Trifecta

• Guggenheim

• National Endowment for the Humanities

• Rockefeller


History of the Book


When ideas are detached from the media used to transmit them, they are also cut off from the historical circumstances that shape them, and it becomes difficult to perceive the changing context within which they must be viewed. (24)


It is one thing to describe how methods of book production changed after the mid-15c or estimate rates of increased output. It is another thing to decide how access to a greater abundance or variety of written records affected ways of learning, thinking, and perceiving among literate elites. It is another to decide how laws, languages, or mental constructs were affected by more uniform texts. (9)


Aspects of Print Culture

• dissemination

• standardization

• reorganization

• data collection

• preservation

• amplification/reinforcement


Widespread Effects• political

• constitutional

• ecclesiastical

• economic

• sociological

• philosophical

• literary


Renaissance

Enlightenment


Kate:Eisenstein’s particular attention to rhetorical context as well as her explicit methodological and historiographical considerations simply made me happy—I can’t help but love writers who are so meticulously upfront in naming their research practices.... Eisenstein’s insistence on locating book culture only in specific rhetorical context in specific regional and historical settings seems to be making a case against the possibility of technological determinism (which she also blatantly refutes, too). Does this methodological and historiographical choice always dismantle the technological determinism argument?


Evolution v

Revolution


Rachel:

Eisenstein presents many ideas that seem to be meant as a starting point for discussion rather than answers. She presents ideas that push the ‘revolution’ and the ‘evolutionary’ theories that she lays out as a dichotomy in the first chapter. How do we get past this in reading such work? Is she attempting to make a point for the agency of the press, something beyond for call for attention to it from historians?


Access


• Travel time

• Latin v Vernacular texts

• Handwriting workbooks

• Speed of reproduction

• Availability of copies

• Individual learning (66, 72)


LaToya:

One assumption that I wish was challenged is this idea that “typographical fixity is the prerequisite for the rapid advancement of learning” (113). This statement seems to assume that 1) typographical fixity is a requirement for learning, 2) it somehow increases the rate of learning, 3) that there is one universal concept or understanding of learning, which is Western in nature. I do not agree with any of these assumptions across the board. I think it would have been more accurate to say that in the case of the population she has used in her study this was the case.


Kate:

How do our contemporary academic publishing practices and interactions match up (or not) with post-printing press features? What are some of the benefits and losses involved with communication exchanges regarding revisions through email?


Censorship


Technical Texts and

Standardization


rise of modern science• Maps

• Charts

• Tables

• Instructional manuals

• Textbooks


• improved consistency

• swift corrections

• taxonomy

• increasing popularity of alphabetization

• other aspects/implications of ordering


Print conventions for readerly efficiency

• Title page

• Table of contents

• Footnotes

• Cross references

• Page numbers

• Section breaks


Tim:

But, as I look deeper, I’m more interested in noting how the more things change, the more they stay the same. Just as Walter Ong reminds us that Trithemius’s critique of books was the same as Plato’s was for writing and seems so similar to many of those critiques of we hear of texting and twitter, I was struck by moments in Eisenstein’s book where we see the rhetorical constraints placed on technology by its human use.running headers, etc.) and scribes follow suit.


We saw it in those Gutenberg Bible leaves. The printers had to mimic what was known. In other words, in order to gain purchase as a legitimate technology, enterprising printers had to subscribe to the visual rhetoric and stylistic conventions of scribal manuscripts. They had to live up to the current hegemonic understanding of quality. Soon, though, scribal culture was mimicking printed conventions. As the technology gains purchase, printers begin to maximize its reader-friendly possibilities (Table of Contents, running headers, etc.) and scribes follow suit.


and also for publicity, right up front

• firm names & emblems

• shop addresses


Image shift

• Engraving

• Reproducibility

• Veracity


Tim:

At the same time, though, standardization and replicability helped to reinstate all the worst aspects of the Enlightenment project. Such standardization allowed Jefferson to pass out many many many copies of his racist thought on blacks in his Virginia Papers. It allowed maps to become standardized in a Eurocentric lens. It allowed encyclopedias like the one Krista is studying to taxonomize knowledge from all over the globe according to a European mindset. Just as this technology democratized for some, it tightened the grips of the process of Othering. It made it more efficient, widespread, seemingly scientific.


Print shop as cultural center


Print shop as center of cultural production


Print shop as business.


Kate:

How does agency function in the relationships between writer and printer in the 17th c., as described by Eisenstein? How does agency function in contemporary relationships between writers and publishers? Which is better?


Reordering of labor


• Publishers

• Compositors

• Typefounders

• Printers

• Authors

• Amanuenses

• Mechanics

• Scholars

• Artists

• Translators

• Binders


• copy editors

• correctors

• illustrators

• print dealers

• indexers

• misc. editorial workers

• delivery men

• metal workers

• punch cutters


Rachel:

What other technologies act to reorder occupations and bring about new cross-scholarly works? It seems that the printing press, and now the internet, are still the most prominent form for this sort of sharing of knowledge? They surpass the university in my opinion, as the university is somewhat closed within its schools as compared to a library or online journals. It rings true to me that this kind of cross-scholarly work is essential to new ideas as the author mentions, but also a potential check-and-balance for ourselves as we strive for progress, and a key to the arts in the postmodern world.


Typography As Craft


Crowdsourcing


Cultural undergrounds


Ben:

What can the history of the printing press tell us about the relationship of our current technologies to the creation of knowledge? If the printing of stable editions of books created the means for careful revision, what does the internet—with its endless possibilities for revision and creation—do to the creation and stability of knowledge? Have we lost typographical fixity? What have we gained without it?


Printing press

Business

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