Where does literacy begin and end? We take Homer&rsquo\;s \;Iliad \;to be the foundation of literary culture\, but such texts stem from an oral tradition. Their stories were embodied and mutable\, each telling carrying only an essence. Reading took off when such yarns were no longer told and solidified into the written word. Writing a &lsquo\;definitive&rsquo\; version brings permanence\, but does the artefact thus become a monolith\, effectively spelling the word&rsquo\;s end? \;
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In reading\, words stand apart from their everyday significance. They thus demand compensation. Already in the fourth century\, Augustine found Saint Ambrose reading silently startling. Even as the Saint&rsquo\;s &ldquo\;voice and tongue were at rest\,&rdquo\; his eyes nonetheless &ldquo\;ran over the text&rdquo\; and his &ldquo\;heart searched out the meaning&rdquo\;. The subsequent evolution of writing techniques &mdash\; \;from Gutenberg to HTML &mdash\; \;only fuels their continued abstraction and our interpretative adaptation.
Technology gets the blame today for us no longer reading enough\, not writing well\, \;and\, worst of all\, failing to parse the written word. Yet already in the nineteenth century\, Nietzsche bemoaned mass literacy as ironically causing the decline of &lsquo\;authentic&rsquo\; literacy. Mass entertainment and AI read-write tools make authenticity a premium\, while the Chinese state is investing in the promotion of reading as a geopolitical tactic. Are reading and writing\, therefore\, a battleground of both our tastes and resources?
Perhaps these questions are the haunting of language itself\, with literacy its inescapable instrumentalisation. \;Out of Print \;will examine the ostensible crisis of reading in our age in literary\, philosophical\, historical\, and sociological forms.
With contributions from Edmund King (Open)\, Alison Brady (UCL)\, Kit Wilson\, Daniel Hadas (Kings)\, and aesthetic interruptions\, Out of Print will examine the ostensible crisis of reading in our age in literary\, philosophical\, historical\, and sociological forms.
Symposium programme
For writer \;Kit Wilson\, the problem of literacy is not its decline\, but rather a hyper-literate state. The written word has become a bulwark against experience\, with the reading of social media posts or Substack essays is at best a distraction. Wilson&rsquo\;s work explores the confusion of the &lsquo\;map&rsquo\; with the &lsquo\;territory&rsquo\; that occludes access to an understanding of things outside of language itself. When we treat language as extrinsic to experience in this manner\, do we end up reducing our ability to understand what language describes to machine language?
Alison Brady \;challenges concerns about digitalisation as a threat to literacy. Arguments in favour of &ldquo\;slow reading&rdquo\;\, for example\, overlook that reading and writing have always been technological. As the phenomenologist and provocateur\, Vilem Flusser\, discussed in \;Does Writing Have a Future?\, writing technologies\, \;from chisels to smart pens\, have always been central to literacy practices\, conditioning what is possible in the first place.
Edmund King \;is interested in anxieties around the decline of reading and literacy\, and the outsized fantasies of the power of reading they produce. As humanists feel increasingly under threat in the institutions\, they attribute to reading (particularly the reading of fiction) miraculous and healing powers. In an age where daily reading time is plummeting\, we cling to the promises of &lsquo\;bibliotherapy\,&rsquo\; that books are good as a health supplement to be consumed. In the process\, the \;content \;of such books and the practice\, aesthetics\, and tradition of reading goes by the by.
Scholar \;Daniel Hadas \;will explore Homer&rsquo\;s transition from spoken to written text\, as the pivotal moment in ancient Greco-Roman literacy. He will historicise writing and literacy&rsquo\;s role in the Ancient world.