The renowned French historian stresses the importance of school as a key tool to achieve a harmonious relationship between digital technology and culture of the printed book. When it comes to analyzing the past, present or the future of the book, it is essential to tap into the thinking of Roger Chartier (Lyon, 1945). Of his numerous works on the practices of writing and reading in the West may include the classic The world as representation (Gedisa, 1992) and more recent Listening to the dead as his eyes (Katz, 2008). A few weeks after receiving an honorary doctorate from the University of San Martin, the French historian adncultura spoke with some of the issues he was passionate about: books, disputes with digital culture and education.
"In his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France, entitled" Listening to the dead eyes, "you ask an elementary question, basically, that I would return here. The question is what is a book.
"There are several definitions that we can consider, such as those arising from the metaphors used in the Golden or conceptual distinctions century XVIII, who argue that the book has body and soul. Or that the book, as Kant said, is on the one hand, a mechanicum opus, a material object produced by a technique which the object belongs to whoever buys it, and, secondly, a speech, a play intended for a that in that sense, belongs to whoever wrote.
- What happens to the meaning of the work? Is property of the author or the reader?
"The situation is really complex. Because what the reader reads a book, but the authors do not write books. Written works, speeches that others, editors, printers, typesetters, transformed into books. This transformation provides a way to text sometimes overflows or even contradicts the author's intentions. And what is appropriated by the reader is the text as material. But on the other hand, the construction of meaning that makes the reader does not refer only to their expectations or categories, but also to the reading experience that each produces a particular text. Hence, for me, the need to link three elements in the analysis: the compositional procedures, appropriations (both in the same society as over time) and the material is written and printed items.
-On several occasions has referred you to a process of "dematerialization of the work, which is enhanced for several centuries. What are the causes and scope of this dematerialisation?
"There are many reasons that have wiped out the effect of registration materials. First, the definition of literary property promoted in the eighteenth century, which states that the author is the owner of a text, regardless of their material forms successive or contemporaneous. The copyright protects the work in its immaterial essence, in its dimension of aesthetic and intellectual production. And from that moment the law itself operates the dematerialization of the work. It is very interesting that arise when disputes over copyright. There we see the problem of defending the copyright of an author about his work at a time when the Enlightenment dream indicated the possibility of appropriating all the ideas that were considered useful for the progress of humanity. Some authors such as Condorcet in France, which radically rejected any notion of copyright, because they believed no one could appropriate the fundamental ideas of the Enlightenment process.
- What are the other reasons for the dematerialization of the work?
"Another key reason is linked to the reception. In this sense, is the reader himself who dematerialized the work by reading it. Unconsciously, creates a relationship in which the text loses all forms particular specificity. It is the discourse of the other with which the reader talks, which penetrates, or is the discourse that passes through it.
-naively, the reader can experience the text as a kind of inner voice, detached from all materiality. But also, from a naive at all, much of literary criticism has rejected the materiality of the text.
"Actually we could say that this was reinforced by the entire literary criticism, both for the more classical and for which came from structuralism. The classical tradition, for which the text is in the heart or mind of the author, did not address the material form, but the intention the author. But neither did the criticism originated in French structuralism, but somehow erased the author ranked the sense in linguistic functioning of the speech, leaving no room for the effect of materiality, the registration form.
"When you issued the revolutions of literacy (Gedisa, 2000, French edition, 1997), the de-saparición the book as object appeared imminent. However, there are still many readers who remain faithful to the book of paper.
"At that time there was an address contained in a prophetic stance that predicted the immediate disappearance of the book. Some had this with enthusiasm and others rejected. I think we've come out of this antagonism, in particular thanks to the idea that making sense of a text, whether by its author, whether by its reader, is not independent of the form of registration. It is seen that there is no equivalence between a text on the screen and text in printed book form. Even though the text could be considered linguistically the same, the relationship with him is completely different. Not only in terms of body posture, but also the practice of reading is different.
- What are the differences?
"A central element, key, reading is the relationship that can be set at all times and immediately between the excerpt, and the entire work: consistency and identity. Both in the case of the novel as in the trial, is that the printed book allows this relationship to a facility that is not in the mail. In the digital world, the fragment out of context of the whole to which he belonged. This is a property that favors the texts are fragments of a database, because it assumes that nobody will read a database in its entirety. But when is a book that is in a narrative or argumentative demonstration, is that the expectation of the reader (at least the reader who entered the world of literacy with print books) stays true to the book object, which, while not being forced to read every page, provided the relationship between fragment and whole becomes possible.
"In this situation, does it make sense to maintain the distinction between body and soul in the book?
-Currently, besides the book as a particular object is the computer, which carries all the texts and also serves to read and write. Now, if it becomes complex to keep the book as a body, what remains of the book as a discourse or the book as a soul? This is all the discussion on the subject of e-book concept. How can we maintain the view identification of the book as a work in the digital world?
- Is it possible?
"The problem is that the digital world, in its origin, said the idea of \u200b\u200bmobile text, malleable, open, distributed free. A series of concepts that oppose term by term with the criteria that defined the book as a discourse in the eighteenth century, that is, a work that is not mobile in their text, although it may be in form, "for no is malleable, which is imposed by the registration form, which belongs to an author who has rights to both economic and moral on her, and, finally, that circulates through the publishing and library market.
- This opposition continues to be valid?
"There is a tension between two positions. On the one hand, those who claim that the world could be a world texts of speeches without owners, produced in a polyphonic and spreading of originality, referred to the thought or the feeling of a single individual. On the other, those who seek to introduce into the digital world with means to maintain the category of uniqueness, originality and ownership. Ie, that texts are closed, the reader can not intervene in them, that access is not necessarily free of charge but, as in the case of a printed book, involving a payment, and recognition the work as something mobile, as it can go from one computer to another, but that is not open, that is identified as a composition that has an originality and uniqueness that refer to the proper name of its author.
- What do you think of the increasingly frequent cases of thought and written texts for the electronic world (blogs, web pages) but which are later published as books on paper?
"There is a kind of ironic revenge of the classical form of the book. For those writing practices that have their origin and their meaning in the digital world, with a brief, time sequence, with an openness to dialogue with the reader- today are in a format that is inconsistent with the logic that has led to the writing. This could be interpreted as evidence of the force that perpetuates the printed object. But at the same time, can be interpreted as the strength of the proposal for a new way of writing was invented precisely because he was away, distant from the classical criteria of writing for the printed text. This reinforces the idea that only a radical replacement, what we see today are multiple forms of coexistence between writing and recording digital print. Screens and printed books can cohabit the same world: this is something we experience every day.
- Are there factors that can disrupt the harmony of the living?
"First, do not think that everyone has immediate access to technology. Even developed countries have cultural boundaries, economic, technical terms such access. This is something that should not be forgotten. But that division is added to a generational problem. Is fundamental difference between those who entered the screen from the written word, written or printed, and younger, conversely, sometimes entering the world of literacy from an experience that has built and is experienced each day in front of the screen.
-Young that are very adept at reading and writing text message but have difficulties in studying academic texts.
"Exactly. We are faced with new generations of readers who have built their habits in front of a textual inscription has little to do with the classic practice of the book, journal, etc.. In such cases is likely to be difficulties in reading by an inappropriate application to printed texts in the way of reading that has been built in front of the screen and that is the discontinuity, segmentation, fragmentation. This is a fundamental challenge that must be seen and already considered "school.
- What is the role school? "Train children in the new technologies or to insist on presenting a traditional lecture mode, which is considered in crisis?
-Both. Because on one hand, it is absolutely necessary to provide facilities for all citizens to enter the digital world that is imposed on them every day. It is a world not only for pleasure, games. It is also the world of administrative form, the world used to build everyday. Thus, the new form of illiteracy could be exclusion from the digital world: people can read and write but unable to enter this new world of multiple business forms, games, discovery of learning. In this perspective, the school must give a central place in the presence of the digital world. On the other hand, of course, the school must remain the place in which to learn the written culture in its most traditional. Must show that there are different ways of reading reading and fast batch occurs off screen, and that these forms can be useful precisely because they are different.
- Is a task that the school can pursue?
"I think that is a huge task, difficult, which asks teachers, but this relationship would maintain dual dialogical understanding necessary for citizens of XXI and XXII century. Children can not be out of the digital world that is everywhere. It is similar to what happens with television. The school can not turn it off. What you can do is teach to use: to discriminate, to choose, to criticize. Similarly, entry into this world must be accompanied by a sustained relationship with the past is still present. That is, the past present of the existence of some texts or works with a form that allows the digital-plus-an understanding and making sense-and thus, the individual-in its critical relation to society or other or with nature. Gustavo Santiago
DNA
Culture
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