Introduction: What Is Textual Culture?

Author(s): Joe Bray and Ruth Evans Reviewed work(s): Source: Textual Cultures, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Autumn, 2007), pp. 1-8 Published by: Indiana University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30227909 . Accessed: 26/05/2012 23:35
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Introduction
What is Textual Culture?
Joe Bray and RuthEvans

IT IS NO EASY TASK TO INTRODUCE A NEW INTELLECTUALFIELD--"TEXTUAL

CULTURE"-at the same time as being wary of defining it too precisely. This collection of essays had its genesis in a conference held at the University of Stirling in July 2005 to mark the inauguration of a new collaborative research group. The idea of Textual Culture originated with Bethan Benwell, Joe Bray, Adrian Hunter, and Stephen Penn as a way of bringing together their diverse research interests and going beyond the usual disciplinary protocols that structure academic departments and research in the UK and US. It was also inspired by a sense of seeing what might emerge, precisely because-as we stated in the conference call for papers-"the future shape of Textual Culture is still unknown". Nevertheless, a kind of manifesto appears on the Stirling research group's website: Textual Culture refers to the material processes and ideological formations surrounding the production, transmission, reception, and regulation of texts. It studies the interactions between these processes and formations in order to show how texts get made and how they are understood. It works within and across intellectual history, literary criticism, critical theory, linguistics and critical discourse analysis, history of the book, and publishing-as-process. It does not have an allegiance to a single disciplinary area, and it contests the boundaries and traditions of existing disciplinary categories.'

We are gratefulto our colleaguesat Stirling,Bethan Benwell,Adrian Hunterand helpand advice. StephenPenn,fortheireditorial 1.TextualCulturewebsite: http://www.textual-culture.stir.ac.uk/ (last accessed20 July2007).

2 1 JoeBray and RuthEvans Ambitious in scope, this new enterprise seeks to work with, but also to go beyond, the recent disciplinary shift that has brought together literary criticism and history of the book-for so long opposed (the major landmark is LERER and PRICE 2006). We have traveled a long way from 1927 when R. B. McKerrowarguedthat "[t]hevirtue of bibliography[....] is its definiteness [...] [I]t therefore offers a very pleasant relief from critical investigations of the more 'literary'kind" (1927, 2). For McKerrow, bibliography/textual criticism (the antecedent of "book history" and "history of the book")2 is virtuously "definite";literary criticism, by implication, is disconcertingly open-ended. But the old distinction between the reassuringly bounded object of "scientific" study, the material "book", and the shifty and idealist literary "text", generating a plethora of readings, is no longer tenable. If it was once the case that, as Leah Price observes, "'book history' has come to stand for a materialist resistance to theory, to idealism, even to ideas",in other words, a resistance to interpretation, book history today does not replace "hermeneutics by pedantry".Rather, it insists "that every aspect of a literary work bears interpretation - even, or especially, those that look most contingent" (PRICE 2006, 10, 11). Textual Culture emphatically agrees with Price's statement. But it also recognizes that the literary work is not the only type of text. Its "manifesto" points crucially to textual objects and practices that are not exclusively literary: "linguistics [.. .1critical discourse analysis, [...] and publishing-as-process". And Textual Culture is interested in spoken as well as written texts (see BENWELL 2005). By including cultural practices, non-literary objects and talk, including talk about texts, Textual Culture engages a broad disciplinary agenda from which it derives its critical edge. Like Donna Haraway's cyborg, Textual Culture is a hybrid creature: a bastard child, unfaithful to its origins, and thereforecapable of constituting, in Haraway'swords, "an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruitful couplings" (HARAWAY 1991, 150). These couplings bear exciting fruit in this issue, which is a mix of papers from the 2005 conference and newly commissioned essays. No single essay in this issue instantiates "Textual Culture".Rather, the essays work cumulatively to put pressure on the categories of both book history and literary criticism, but more importantly to extend the field into new areas, especially those that have been previously thought of as mutually exclusive. 2. On the distinction betweenBuchgeschichte, "bookhistory" (analytic description, with its rootsin philology) of the book"(derived and "histoire du livre", "history fromthe Annales cannotbe reschool),see KUSKIN 2006, 25. Butthisdistinction ducedto a matter of Anglo-Saxon nordoes it do vs. French'theory', empiricism to the studyof booksor the studyof literary justice,Kuskin argues, history.

Introduction

This extensionof the fieldis centralto the firstthree essaysin this issue, whichdeal with periodization (Kuskin), speechvs. writing (Syme),and cultural value (Frow).In his essay "'The loadstarre of the Englishlanguage': Calenderand the Constructionof Modernity", WilSpenser'sShepheardes liam Kuskin considers a moment in literaryhistory-the fifteenth cenof the book and a dense web tury-as it is refracted throughthe physicality of textualallusionsthat coherearoundthe term"loadestarre" (guidingstar). and the backwards forwards from term's reference to and Working Lydgate Chaucerin E.K.'s Kuskindemonstrates Calender, prefaceto the Shepheardes how the word and its materialinscriptionsembodynotions of vernacular that confoundexistingmodelsof periodization. Culturalauthorauthorship is "not across bifurcated and ity manuscript printtechnologies,medievalor modernperiods,butderivedfromthe ongoingmanipulation of material and intellectualaspectsof literaryproduction to the materialand inaccording tellectualpracticesof an overalltextualculture". it doesnot evolve"linearly butas a web Literary history,then, is "involute": of connections,a weavingthat recallsthe root meaningof the wordtext". Kuskin's modelsthat essaychallengesthe epochalthinkingandevolutionary haveheldswayas muchin mediahistoryas in literary history: orality replaced waxtabletsby anby writing, writingby print,andprintbydigitalinscription; imal membrane, paperand the siliconchip;scrollby codex, codex by hypertext. Rather,there is a rangeof technologiesand material formscompeting with each otherat anygiven timeandplace(seePRICE 2002, 38 and2006, 15). Kuskin's innovationis to link that competitive mediahistoryto literary histhe fifteenthcenturynot as the breakthat makesmodertoryand to refigure butas a complexperiodof returnandrenewal, and continuation nity possible denial,that givesbirthto "anew conceptof writing". HolgerSyme'sessay "The Look of Speech"is similarlyconcernedwith but in this case those betweenspeech, writingand "conceptual slippages", in modern England.Beginningwith an analysisof the "bandeprint early in earlymodernillustrations, roles" Symeshowshowwritingand speechdid have not at this time.This has been a neglectedasconceptualparticularity shift fromoralityto print:the period,Syme pect of earlymodernEngland's of writingand speech,even their argues,is one when "therelativeauthority as modes of distinct a crisis". underwent identity language, By invokingart and drama,Syme pushesbeyondthe conjunctionof book historyand literand art, aremuarycriticismto showhow speech and writing,performance imbricated the and not during tually period yet ranged in hierarchical
binaries of speech/writing, presence/absence. This cultural moment is not a break with but a continuation of the medi-

4 1 Joe Bray and Ruth Evans

Houseof eval. Syme'sargument recallsthe wordsof the Eaglein Chaucer's House assumes Famewho explains that the speech pouring into Rumor's the physical identity of its speaker:"'Hyt wexeth lyke the same wight / Which that the wordin erthe spake,I Be hyt clothed redor black'" (BENSON the colorsof ink and rubrica1987:Houseof Fame,1076-8)."Redor black": tion on the pageof a medievalmanuscript. Speech takeson corporealform -is "clothed", like the personwho utteredit - but takes the formtoo of letterson the page.If speech is somaticin the medievaland earlymodernperiod,then so too is writing. In "The Practiceof Value", interestlies less in the material John Frow's of than in "the of processes writing regimes value that governour textual transactions". By itemizingthe myriadjudgmentsthat he makesduring a single day,Frowplaceshimself in the Renaissancetraditionof ethical selfNosce teipsum (Knowthyself).Justas Albrecht Dtirertook his knowledge: as the of his art,so Frowtakes a day in his life as the subjectof body subject an ethical enquiryinto the subject's encounterwith culture.His subjectis a whose identity is constitutedthrough the judgingsubject,homoestimans, of value within different the law, institutions:the university, daily practice the cultureindustryand the personal,where the personalis no longer opposed to the institutionbut is constitutedas an institutionin its own right. There arefruitfullinkshere with culturalstudies'interestin the anthropolfromMass-Observation in 1937to Joe Moran's Queuogy of the "everyday", 2005 and DE CERTEAU 2007; 1984).But Frowuses (MORAN ingfor Beginners the quotidian to challenge the "anti-interpretive tendencies"in cultural studiesand literarystudies(and,by extension, book history),arguingthat is the inescapable horizonboth of workin the humanitiesand "[j]udgment and insocialsciences,andof everyday life;it is builtdeep into the processes stitutionsof textualculture". What Frow's essay brings to the idea of Textual Culture, then, is the of Valuesare value that is missingfrom the original"manifesto". question crucial in determiningwhich texts get circulatedand how they are regulated.Valuesarealso crucialin determiningthe fieldof TextualCultureitself: why, for example,we construct book history, discourseanalysis and literary criticism as separatedisciplines and range them hierarchically, ratherthan seeingthem as mutually enrichingand invigorating. The final threeessaysin the issueall explorewaysin which TextualCulturecan seek to go beyondthe disciplinethat has blossomedin the worldof Anglo-Americancriticismin the last few decades and which, though it
2006, 9), is most commonly known as "owns up to a raft of aliases" (PRICE "book history" or "the history of the book". While recognizing the substan-

Introduction1 5

tial advances in methodology and argumentthat have been developed within the field,each contributor agrees,in his or her own way,with D. F. and the implications McKenzie's of "textual assessment criticism", withering of its innocence of broadertheoreticalissues:"Itsintellectualtimidity and mechanicalzeal, if they persistin the face of such advancesin other fields, are a guaranteeof imminent oblivion"(2002, 209). In proposingthat Textual Culture expands beyond the sometimes"mechanical" proceduresof and insightsfrom areas "bookhistory", each essaydrawson methodologies of studythat might not appearimmediately relevant: mediaand communiand French theories of text cation studies (Schroder),critique g.ne.tique Eachthus attemptsto open Tex(Bushell)and patternrecognition(Siskin). tual Cultureup to new, even unexpectedcriticalapproaches, in the belief that these can help both to defineits remitand to suggestwaysin which it resistsdefinition. In "MediaDiscourseAnalysis:Researching CulturalMeaningsfrom Into Kim the of stresses Schroder ception Reception" "multidimensionality" the "communicative of both mediaproducers and consumers. repertoires" to mediatexts, criticaldisHe criticizesone of the mostpopularapproaches that is, the circumcourse analysis,for its belief that "discourse practices", and reception,aresomehow manifestin the text itself. stancesof production In fact, Schrcder asserts,"the media text as it appearson the newspaper page, or on the TV screen,or on the website,revealsvery little about the multiple discursiveconstraints and opportunitiesaffecting, on the one hand, the team of people producingit in the complexdivision of labor of the contemporary media, and on the other hand the multipleinterpretive at workwhen the recipientsmakesenseof the verbaland visual repertories life". thatboth "encodingand defeaturesin contextsof everyday He argues discourse examined need to be and, taking empirically, coding practices" inspirationfromrecent workin mediastudies,proposes"aholistic, empiriwhich he names "discourse ethcal approachto media discourseanalysis", This "a to textual which involves careful attention approach, nography". that exploresthe meaningprocessesof text detail with systematicfieldwork and recipients", is then appliedto a "responsibility ad"produced producers BP in 1991. oil the interviews with BP a Schroder's company publicrelaby tions managerand thirty-twoEnglishand Danish"recipients" of the adverof meanings which people tisement confirm the "multidimensionality ad"and reinforce the need to look beyondthe generatefromone particular media text itself for a proper understandingof "socioculturalmeaning
processes. 3. Fora similarly"ethnographic" approach,see BENWELL2005.

6 1 Joe Bray and Ruth Evans

attentionto the extra-textualcontexts of productionand reSchroder's studception addsa dimensionthat has often been missingfromtraditional ies in "thehistoryof the book".D. F. McKenzie's call in his landmark essay and Meaning: The Case of WilliamCongreve"(firstdelivered "Typography at a symposium in 1977)for"ageneraltheorywhich wouldorderourinvestigation of authorialintention, its mediationand readerresponsein a comprehensivedisciplinedway"(2002, 209) has only patchilybeen met in the mustengage more fully past thirty years.His belief that "textualcriticism" with "developments in critical theory" (206) is evident however in Sally Bushell'sessay"TextualProcessand the Denial of Origins".Bushellnotes that "afull criticalengagementwith textual processand the coming-intoworkhas not yet occurredin any systematic being of the literary waywithin Forher the Frenchcritique as deAnglo-Americanscholarship". geine'tique, velopedby Almuth Gresillon,LouisHay and others,offers"onlya partially Its "empiricallysatisfactorymodel for Anglo-American ways forward". grounded,methodologically-focused" approachneeds to be supplemented, accordingto Bushell,by "theoriesof the text",especiallythose concerned with durationand agency.Returning to Roland Barthes'sseminal essay "From Workto Text"Bushellexploresthe possibilitythat "bothwriterand readerpotentiallymovebetweena responseto draftmaterials as both Work and Text".While the writermight "be able at the same timeto know that languageexists outsideand beyondhis control (in an eternal'now'),and yet of a past thought", so too the reader experienceit as if it werethe expression comes to the draftmaterials of "textualprocess" with "fullknowledgeof the states of productthat it will/ has alreadybecome".These "contradictory" and not are linked Bushell to the Freudian knowing knowing by concept of in which his later refers to "apsychicsplit which oc"disavowal", writings curs within the ego when realityprovestoo much to take".Accordingto is what gives textual process"itspleasureand her, this "doubled response" its power". Bushell'sengagementwith the work of Barthes, Foucault and Freud (amongothers)is evidenceof PeterD. McDonald'sbelief that "unexpected intersections" can be foundbetween"the apparently of opposedenterprises and the of the book" that the fact theory (2006, 217).Regretting history "the two enterprises for hegemonyin have, in their verydifferentstruggles the academy,maintaineda resolutedistance from each other" (222), McDonald urges consideration of "the various potential and actual connections between these two modes of inquiry"(222). The task for "literary
historiography",he asserts, is to resist "efforts to reify theory or book history",and "to addressthe question of literature in new interdisciplinary, per-

Introduction 7

haps ultradisciplinary, waysby makingthe most of the concepts,protocols, and sourcesboth enterpriseshave opened up"(227).Though he acknowlcan provideall the answers,4 he is edges that no one theoreticalapproach it kind" of that recent of the "narratives (227),arguing after-theory skeptical is "more and accurate,to think of the currentsituationas comproductive, bidforhegemony" after successful not but (215).Ining theory aftertheory's stead of "a nostalgic spirit of dismay about a revolution betrayed",he of what was lost amidthe polemics,for or against advocates"anassessment theory, and an investigationof variousroadsnot taken, or only half ex(216). plored,duringthe hasty onwardmovementof the struggle" The emergingenterpriseof Textual Culture is well placed to explore In the final essay in roadsnot taken, or only half explored". these "various the issue, "TextualCulture in the Historyof the Real",CliffordSiskin is arguinginsteadthat "in the similarlyresistantto "aftertheory"narratives, 'after Like we're McDonald,Siskin believes that the humanities, impact"'. few have clearedthe space for new, prodecades "theorywars"of the past ductivemodesof inquiry,one of which is TextualCulture.In his expansive piece he offersa historyof how this projectmight look from a future perhisat this particular spective,and why it mightbe thoughtto have emerged how an emphasis he discusses on "thephysical toricalmoment.In particular, natureof the text" will "look to the future". Having traced the history of on the end of the eighteenthcentury the moment at "thephysical", focusing as a result of the of when, partly spread writingand "printculture","the Siskindrawsa comparison real", inescapably physicalcame alive it became of technologiesof "virtual with the currentproliferation These, he reality". on the notion of "reality", and raisingthe claims,areputtingsimilarpressure "nolongerdoes the work of possibilityof a futurein which "the physical" Textual Culture's the real". then, is potential eviemphasison materiality, dence that "in moments of change the olderformof realitybecomes the of the new one",and symptomatic of a widerculturalimpulseto turn content into content". For the fabricof reality" Siskin, "changing requires "physicality of which he claimsis "as re-assessment a analytictools, including"ideology", as it is with the subject". He believes that "to complicitwith the physical forms makeroomfor the virtualentails makingroomfornewly appropriate and proposesthat "pattern in the form of of analysis", recognition", paired algorithmssuch as scalability and emergence,and dedifferentiationand Siskin'sessayimagines eversion,offersa potentiallyproductive wayforward.
4. McDonald suggestsin this essaythat PierreBourdieu's concept of the "literaryfield"offers"the most effective link between book history and theoretical reflectionson literature" (225).

8 I JoeBray andRuthEvans
a future for Textual Culture that paradoxically cannot yet be envisaged, one that is excitingly independent of the traditional tools of either literary criticism or "the history of the book".

of Sheffield University University of Stirling Works Cited

1987.The Riverside 3d ed. Boston:Houghton Chaucer, Mifflin. DE CERTEAU, Michel.1984.ThePractice of Everyday Life,translated by Steven F.RENDELL. CA: of California Press. Berkeley, University Donna.[1985] 1991. "AManifesto forCyborgs: andSoHARAWAY, Science,Technology, in the 1980s". cialistFeminism In Simians, and Women: The Reinvention Cyborgs of New York; Nature,149-81. Routledge. William.2006. "Introduction: Caxton'sTrace". In Caxton's Trace: KUSKIN, Following Studiesin the History edited William 1-31. KUSKIN, Notre of English Printing, by Dame:University of NotreDamePress. Seth and LeahPRICE,eds. 2006. "Special of the Bookand LERER, Topic:The History the Ideaof Literature". PMLA121: 9-34. Peter. 2006."Ideas of the BookandHistories of Literature: AfterTheory?". McDONALD, In "Special The of the Book and of the co-ordinated Idea Literature", Topic: History LERER and Leah PRICE. Seth PMLA 121: 214-28. by 2002.Making "Printers andOther McKENZIE, D[onald] F[rancis]. Meaning: of theMind" edited D. Peter MCDONALD and Michael F. Amherst & Boston: SUAREZ. Essays, by of Massachusetts Press. University RonaldB. 1927.An Introduction to Bibliography Students. Oxfor Literary McKERRow, ford: Clarendon Press. theEveryday. LondonandNew York: MORAN,Joe.2005.Reading Routledge. 2007 The to Bedtime. . Queuing for Beginners: Storyof DailyLifefromBreakfast Profile. London: London Review PRICE,Leah.2002."TheTangible Page". of Books,24:21 (31 October): 36-39. In "Special . 2006. "Introduction: Matter", Reading Topic:The Historyof the Book and the Ideaof Literature", and Leah PRICE. co-ordinated by Seth LERER 9-16. PMLA121:
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