Roger Chartier

Se habla de la desaparición del libro;  yo creo que es imposible
Jorge Luis Borges

In 1968, in a celebrated essay, Roland Barthes associated the all-powerfulness of the reader with the death of the author. Dethroned from his former sovereignty by language, or rather by "multiple writings from several cultures, all in a dialogue with one another, in parody and protest", the author gave up his preeminence to the reader, this "someone who, in one field, gathers together all the traces which constitute the written". Reading was here the place where plural, mobile and unstable meaning was drawn and where texts, regardless of their nature, acquired their sense.[1]

1. Death of the Author, Transfiguration of the Book

This affirmation of the birth of the reader was followed by the diagnosis of his death. There were three main kinds of diagnosis. The first looked to transformations in reading practices. On the one hand, statistical information gathered in surveys on cultural behaviour has conclusively shown – although this may not signify a drop in the overall percentage of readers – a reduction at least in the proportion of 'heavy readers' in each age category, particularly in that of adolescent readers. Observations based on editorial policies have reinforced the belief in the existence of a reading 'crisis'.[2] While fiction is not spared, this crisis is most cruelly felt in the areas of the social and human sciences. The effects are comparable on both sides of the Atlantic, even if the primary causes are not quite the same. In the United States, the essential factor is the drastic reduction in the acquisition of monographs by university libraries whose budgets are eaten up by subscriptions to periodicals which in some cases reach considerable prices – between 10 and 15 thousand dollars a year. Hence the reticence of university publishers to publish works that are considered too specialised: doctoral theses, monographic studies, scholarly works, and so on.[3] In France and, no doubt, more widely in Europe, a similar prudence, which limits both the number of titles published and the number of copies per title is a consequence of a shrinking buying public – which does not only consist of academics – and a drop in sales.

The death of the reader and the disappearance of reading tend to be thought of as the inevitable consequence of the civilisation of screens, of the triumph of images and electronic communication. It is the latter diagnosis that I would like to discuss in this essay. The screens of our century are indeed of a new breed. Unlike cinema or television screens, they bear texts – not only texts, certainly, but also texts. The old opposition between, on the one hand, the book, the written and reading, and, on the other, the screen and images, has been replaced by a new situation in which a new medium for written culture and a new form for the book are now possible. Hence the very paradoxical link between the omnipresence of writing in our societies and the obsessive theme of the disappearance of the book and the death of the reader. In order to understand this contradiction, we need to look back in time and evaluate the effects of previous revolutions in the media of written culture.

In the 4th century of the Christian era, a new form of book imposed itself, at the expense of the one that had been familiar to Greek and Roman readers. The codex - a book composed of pages folded, assembled and bound - progressively but inexorably supplanted the scrolls which, up until then, had borne written culture. The book's new material form ensured that once impossible practices, such as writing while reading, leafing through a work or locating a particular passage, became commonplace. The codex form profoundly transformed the use of texts. The invention of the page, the precision conferred by foliation and indexing, the new relationship between the work and the object which transmits it paved the way for a new relationship between readers and books.

Is it the case that we are on the brink of a similar transformation and that the electronic book will replace or is already replacing the printed codex such as we know it in its various guises, as book, journal, or newspaper? Perhaps. In the decades to come, however, there will most probably prevail a coexistence - not necessarily a peaceful one - between these two book forms and the three modes of inscribing and communicating texts: manuscript writing, printed publication, electronic texts. This hypothesis seems more plausible than the laments about the irremediable loss of written culture or the unbridled enthusiasm which announced the imminent advent of a new era of communication.

This probable coexistence requires that we think about the new ways in which fields of knowledge will be constructed, and about the reading modalities enabled by the electronic book. The latter neither can nor should substitute one medium with another, in the case of works conceived and written in codex form. It has been said that "form has an effect on meaning".[4] Electronic books thus reorganize the way in which we rely on sources to demonstrate arguments. Writing or reading this new type of book necessitates the transformation of the criteria we use for evaluating the credibility of any discourse, particularly learned discourse. Historians have recently begun looking at the various, shifting techniques used to confer credibility to knowledge and at their effects, through the cases, for example, of quotations, footnotes[5] or what Michel de Certeau, echoing Condillac, has called the 'language of calculations'.[6] These established ways of proving the validity of an analysis are profoundly modified once arguments cease to be attached to a linear and deductive logic and are instead open, fragmented and relational (as they are in electronic texts)[7] and once the reader can consult the documents (such as archives, images, words or music) which are the objects or instruments of research.[8] In this sense, the revolution in the modalities of production and transmission of texts is also a fundamental epistemological shift.[9]

With the advent of the codex, written works were constructed on the basis of their material form; for example, texts previously contained in several scrolls were now divided into books, parts or chapters of a unique discourse, all contained in a single work. Similarly, the possibilities as well as the constraints of the electronic book call for the reorganization of the necessarily linear and sequential structure of present-day books, still dependent on the codex form. The electronic format of hypertext and hyper-reading modifies the relation between images, sounds and texts linked up electronically, in a non linear manner, and makes possible a virtually unlimited number of connections between texts.[10] In this borderless textual world, links are the key, through which textual units, fragmented for ease of reading, can be joined together.

It is thus the very notion of 'book' which is put in question by electronic texts. In printed culture, one tends to associate a type of discourse with a type of text and its intended use. The order of discourse is thus based on the material medium, be it letter, newspaper, journal, book or archive. This is not the case in the digital world where all texts, regardless of their nature, are read in the same medium (the computer screen) and in the same forms (generally those decided on by the reader). A 'continuum' is thus created in which no differences remain between the various textual genres or repertoires, now similar in appearance and equivalent in authority. The disappearance of the criteria which once allowed one to distinguish, classify and order discourse has bred much anxiety.

2. Properties and Ownership of Texts

The concepts and technical tools used to designate some electronic texts as 'books' therefore need to be analysed. The reorganization of the world of digital writing is a necessary condition for the introduction of paid online access and for the protection of the author's moral and economic rights. These conditions are based on the necessary, albeit conflictual alliance between publishers and authors, and will probably lead to a profound transformation of the electronic world such as we know it. Security systems aimed at protecting some works or databases, and made more efficient by e-books, will probably multiply and, therefore, fix, freeze and seal texts published electronically.[11] It is a predictable evolution: the 'book' and other digital texts will be defined in opposition to the free and spontaneous electronic communication which allows everyone to circulate their thoughts and works on the Web. This division, it is true, could lead to the economic and cultural hegemony of powerful multimedia and computer companies; but more positively, it could help establish an order of discourse which would take into account the major differences between, on the one hand, spontaneous texts released onto the web, and on the other, vetted, edited writings. The authority of any given text whose provenance and status are clearly stated would thus be assessed on the basis of the modality of its 'publication'. Such a system is needed if one is to counter the indiscriminate nature of the 'information' obtained by most search motors.[12]

Another element could, in the long term, turn the world of digital technology on its head. It arises out of the possibility of detaching the transmission of electronic text from the computer (PC, portable or 'e-book'), through the creation of electronic ink and 'paper'. Researchers at M.I.T. have been developing a technique whereby any object (including the book as we still know it) would be capable of becoming the medium for an electronic book or an electronic library, provided it is equipped with a microprocessor or that it is downloaded from the Internet, and that its pages receive the electronic ink which allows different texts to appear successively on the same surface.[13] Electronic texts could thus be emancipated from the constraints inherent to the screens we are familiar with. This would break the bond (a source of profit for some) between the trade of electronic machines and on-line publishing.

Even without imagining this still hypothetical future, one may wonder whether the electronic book in its current form will be able to attract or produce readers. The long history of reading clearly shows that revolutions in the order of practice always lag behind, and are often slower than, revolutions in technology. New ways of reading did not follow immediately from the invention of printing. Similarly, the intellectual categories which we associate with the world of texts will endure with the new forms of book. It might be useful to remember that, after the invention of the codex and the disappearance of the scroll, the 'book' - here meant as ordered discourse - often corresponded to the textual matter previously contained in a scroll.

Moreover, the electronic revolution, which at first seems universal, can also deepen, rather than reduce inequalities. A new 'illiteracy' could emerge, no longer defined by the inability to read and write, but by the impossibility of gaining access to the new forms of transmission of writing – which, to say the least, do not come free. An electronic correspondence between authors and readers - now transformed into co-authors of a book kept open through their comments and interventions - allows for an author-reader relationship, close in kind to that to which some ancient authors aspired but hard to achieve with the printed book. A more immediate, more dialogic relationship between the work and the reading of the work is an attractive prospect, but it should not make us forget that the potential readers (and co-authors) of electronic books are still very few. The gap remains great between the obsessive presence of the revolution and the reality of reading practices which are still attached to printed objects and which make only very partial use of the possibilities bred by digital technology. We have to be lucid enough not to take what is virtual for a reality already here with us.

What is original, and perhaps worrying about our period is that the different revolutions in written culture which, in the past, had been disjointed, are now happening simultaneously. The electronic text revolution is at once a revolution in the technology of the production and reproduction of texts, a revolution in the medium of writing, and a revolution in reading practices. It is characterized by three main traits which profoundly transform our relationship to written culture. First, the electronic representation of writing radically modifies the notion of context and, as a result, the very process of the construction of meaning. The physical contiguity of different texts gathered in one book or in the same periodical here gives way to their mobile distribution, programmed into the architecture of databases and digitized collections. Second, the electonic representation of writing redefines the material characteristics of works because it dissolves the visible link between the text and the object which contains the text, and because it gives the reader, and no longer the author or the publisher, control over the composition, the arrangement and appearance of the textual units that are to be read. It is thus the whole system of perception and handling of texts which is utterly changed. Finally, when reading on screen, the contemporary reader returns somewhat to the posture of the reader of Antiquity. The difference is that he reads a scroll which generally runs vertically and which is endowed with the characteristics inherent to the form of the book since the first centuries of the Christian era: pagination, index, tables, etc. The combination of these two systems which governed previous writing media (the volumen, then the codex) results in an entirely original relation to texts.

Given these transformations, electronic texts could turn into a reality the old but never fulfilled fantasy of complete knowledge. Like the library of Alexandria, they promise the universal availability of all texts ever written, of all books ever published.[14] As with the practice of commonplace rhetoric in the Renaissance,[15] they call on the collaboration of the reader who can now write in the book himself, entering the wall-less library of electronic writing. As with the Enlightenment project, they delimit an ideal public space where, as Kant believed, there must be a free, unrestricted and all-inclusive deployment of the public exercise of reason, which "one engages in as a scholar for the whole of the reading public" and which authorizes each citizen "in his quality of scholar, to comment publicly, that is to say in writing, on the faults of the old institution".[16]

As was the case in the age of printing, but more forcefully so even, the era of the electronic text is fraught with major tensions between different imaginable futures: the proliferation of separate communities, defined by their use of new technologies; the grip of powerful multimedia companies on the constitution of digital databases and the production or circulation of information; or the establishment of a universal public, defined by the participation of each of its members in the critical examination of exchanged arguments.[17] The free and immediate communication at a distance made possible by the Web might give birth to any one of these situations. It could lead to the loss of common references, to the compartmentalization of groups and the exacerbation of idiosyncrasies. It could also bring about the hegemony of a single cultural model and destroy diversity. On the other hand, however, it might also lead to the growth of a new form for the constitution and communication of knowledge, adding to the transmission of established sciences the collective construction of knowledge through the exchange of expertise and wisdom, in the manner of the correspondences or the periodicals of the old Republic of Letters.[18] If it takes everyone on board, the new encyclopaedic navigation could bring about the realization of universality, the hope for which has always been present in the effort to embrace the multitude of things and words within the order of discourse.

For this to happen, however, the electronic book has to define itself over and against current practices, in which rough texts are placed on the Web which neither have been thought out in relation to their new form of transmission, nor have undergone an editing process. To plead for the use of new technology in the publication of knowledge is therefore to warn against the laziness bred by electronic technology and to encourage a more rigorous control over cultural and individual exchanges. The uncertainties and conflicts with regard to epistolary civility (or incivility), language conventions and relations between public and private sectors as they are redefined by the use of electronic mail all point to this need.[19]

3. Libraries in the Digital Age

The new medium of writing does not mean the end of the book or the death of the reader. The very reverse might be true. However, it does require a redistribution of roles within the 'economy of writing', the competition (or complementarity) between various media and a new relationship, material as much as intellectual and aesthetic, with the world of texts. One may wonder whether electronic texts might ever be able to construct on the basis of written exchanges a public space in which each and everyone can participate. Neither the alphabet, in spite of the democratic qualities which Vico attributed to it,[20] nor printing, in spite of the universality which Condorcet recognized in it,[21] succeeded in doing this.

How, then, are we to locate the role of libraries within these profound transformations of written culture? With the possibilities that new technology allows, our young century can perhaps hope to overcome the contradiction which has always haunted our relationship with the book in the West. The dream of the universal library is the expression of the desire to seize and accumulate the totality of all texts ever written, of all knowledge ever built. But disappointment has always accompanied this expectation of universality since all collections, however rich, can only ever result in a partial, flawed version of the exhaustiveness required to fulfill this wish.

This tension can be understood in the context of the very long duration of attitudes towards writing. It is a tension founded on the fear of loss or lack. It has governed all actions geared at saving the written heritage of humanity: the quest for ancient texts, the copying of the most precious books, the printing of manuscripts, the construction of great libraries, the compilation of the 'libraries without walls' that are encyclopaedias, the collections of texts and catalogues.[22] Given that texts can always disappear, one has had to gather, fix and preserve them. But another peril threatens this never-ending task, that of excess. The reproduction of manuscripts and, later, of printed books was perceived as a terrible danger very early on. Proliferation can become chaos, and abundance can hinder knowledge. Instruments capable of sorting, classifying and ordering are required for the control of excess. Various people have been participating in this ordering process: the authors themselves who judge their peers and their predecessors, the powers at be which censor and subsidize, the publishers who publish (or refuse to publish), the institutions which consecrate and exclude and the libraries which preserve or ignore.

Faced with this double anxiety and with the need to navigate between loss and excess, the library of tomorrow – or of today – can play a decisive role. Admittedly, the electronic revolution has seemed to signify its demise. The communication of electronic texts makes the universal availability of the written heritage conceivable, if not possible; libraries no longer need be the sole centers for the conservation and communication of this heritage. Every reader, wherever he is reading, could receive any one of the texts which make up this library without walls, situated nowhere in particular, where all books would be present in ideal, digital form.

This dream is far from unattractive. But it must not lead us astray. The electronic conversion of all texts whose existence does not originate with computers must in no way entail the downgrading, neglect, or, worse, destruction of the manuscripts or printed matter which bore them in the first place. More than ever, perhaps, one of the essential tasks of libraries is to collect, protect, catalogue and make accessible the written objects of the past. If the works that they have transmitted cease to be communicated, or even preserved in anything other than electronic form, the risk is great that the past's textual cultures, embodied as they are within the objects - the books - which have transmitted them, will no longer be intelligible to us. The library of the future therefore must sustain the knowledge and currency of written culture, in the forms it has taken in the past and still takes, for the most part, in our day.

Libraries will also have to be instruments assisting new readers in finding their way in a digital world where differences between genres and uses of texts are invisible and where the authority of all texts seems equivalent everywhere. Libraries can be attentive to the needs or confusions of readers and can play an essential role in the teaching of the instruments and technology that less expert readers need in order to master the new forms of writing. Just as the presence of the Internet in schools does not in itself dissipate the cognitive difficulties inherent in learning how to write,[23] so the electronic communication of texts does not by itself transmit the knowledge required to understand and use them. Quite the contrary, the reader-navigator of digital technology is at a high risk of getting lost in textual archipelagos without beacon or harbor. The library can be both of these.[24]

Another role for the libraries of tomorrow could be that of reconstituting the sociability around the book, which has been lost.. The long history of reading teaches us that, over the centuries, reading became a silent and solitary practice, and broke itself further and further away from the shared conviviality of writing which once helped unite families, friendships, scholarly societies or militant groups. In a world where reading is defined in terms of a personal, intimate and private relationship with the book, libraries (paradoxically, perhaps, since in the medieval era, they required of readers that they be silent) must protect written patrimony and intellectual and aesthetic creation. As Walter Benjamin pointed out, the techniques of the reproduction of texts or images are not in themselves good or bad.[25] Whether it is historically true or not, this observation shows the extent to which one technique can be used in a variety of ways. Nothing constrains technical devices to play a single, predetermined role. This is an important point, given the ongoing debates about how the ever-increasing electronic dissemination of discourse will affect the public realm.[26]

In a future which is already our present, these effects will be what we collectively make of them, for better or for worse. This is the responsibility we all share in today.

Roger Chartier
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris)

Copyright © 2001 Bibliothèque publique d´information- Centre Pompidou