Intro\Retro

Summary

Overview is inseparable from its retrospective dimension in any look back on the evolution of the codex under shifting technical conditions, from moveable type to pixel backlight. A “cross-sectional” approach to the book/text/medium triad involves chapters arranged here in three respective pairs. First (Part I): the plastic art of the codex, divided between the graphics of easel treatment and conceptual book sculpture. Next (Part II): in close comparison with such material form, an intensive reading of phonemic wording – in its mediating linguistic texture – thrown into relief by visual rather than verbal “signage” in narrative cinema as an alternative time-based medium. Finally (Part III): the ontology of human speech pursued, over against its media ideology, by contemporary theorists Giorgio Agamben and Friedrich Kittler. The introduction also looks back on the “speakwrite” in George Orwell’s 1984 as a mode of dictation contrasted with the transgressive sensuality of handwriting on outmoded paper pages early in the novel.