diff --git a/content/md/003_dont_come.md b/content/md/003_dont_come.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..923b53c --- /dev/null +++ b/content/md/003_dont_come.md @@ -0,0 +1,225 @@ +# Don't come with those tales + +> @published 2019/05/05, 12:00 {.published} + +I love books. I love them so much that I even decide to make +a living from them---probably a very bad career decision. But +I can't idealize that love. + +During school and university I was taught that I should love +books. Actually, some teachers made me clear that it was the +only way I could get my bachelor's degree. Because books are +one of the main freedom devices in our shitty world, right? Not +loving books is like the will to stay in a cave---hello, Plato. +Not celebrating its greatness is just one step to support antidemocratic +regimes. And while I was learning to love books, of course I +also learn to respect its “creators,” until I desire to be one +of them. + +I don't think it is casual that the development of what we mean +by book is independent from the developments of capitalism and +what we understand by author. Maybe correlation; maybe intersection; +but definetly not separates stories. + +Let's start with a common place: the invention of printing. Yeah, +it is an arbitraty and problematic start. We could say that books +and authors goes far before that; therefore, they aren't a product +of what it would became capitalism. But what we have in that +particularly place in history is the standardization and massification +of a practice. It didn't happen from day to night, but little +by little all the methodological and technical diversity became +more homogeneous. And with that, we were able to made books not +as luxury commodities, but as objects of everyday use. + +And not just books, but printed text in general. Before the invention +of printing, we could barely see text in our surroundings. What +surprise me about printing it is not the capacity of production +that we reached, but how that technology normalized the existence +of text in our daily basis. + +Newspapers first and now social media relies on that normalization +to generate the idea of an “universal” public debate---I don't +know if it is actually “public” if almost all popular newspapers +and social media platforms are own by corporations and its criterias; +but let's pretend it is a minor issue. And public debate supposedly +incentivates democracy. + +Before Enlightenment the owners of printed text realized its +freedom potential. Most churchs and kingdoms tried to control +it. The Protestant Church first and then the Enlightment and +emerging capitalist enterprises hijacked the control of public +debate; specifically who owns the means of printed text production, +who decides the languages worthy to print and who sets its main +reader. + +Maybe it is a bad analogy but printed text in newspapers, books +and journals were so fascinating like nowadays is digital “content” +over the Internet. But what I mean is that there were many people +who tried to have that control and power. And most of them failed +and keep failing. + +So during 18th century books started to have another meaning. +They ceased to be mainly devices of God's word to be _a_ device +of freedom of speech. Thanks to the firsts emerging capitalists +we got means for secular thinking. Acts of censorship became +evident acts of political restriction instead of acts against +sinners. + +The invention of printing created so big demand of printed text +that it actually generated the publishing industry. Selfpublishing +to satisfy internal institutional demand openned the place to +an industry for new citizens readers. A luxury and religious +object became a commodity in the “free” market. + +While printed text surpassed almost all restrictions, freedom +of speech rised hand-to-hand freedom of enterprise---the debate +between Free Software Movement and Open Source Initiative relies +in an old and more general debate: how much freedom can we grant +in order to secure freedom? But it also developed other freedom +that was fastened by religious or political authorities: the +freedom to be identify as an author. + +How we understand authorship in our days depends in the process +where the notion of author became more closed to the idea of +“creator.” And it is actually a very interesting semantic transfer. +_In one way_ the invention of printing mechanized and improved +a practice that it was believed to be done with God's help. Trithemius +got so horrified that printing wasn't welcome. But with new Spirits---freedoms +of enterprise and speech---what was seen even as a demonic invention +became one of the main technologies that still defines and reproduces +the idea of humanity. + +This openned the opportunity to independent authors. Printed +text wasn't anymore a matter of God's word or authorities but +a secular and more ephemeral Human's word. The massification +of publishing also openned the gates for less relevant and easy-to-read +printed texts; but for the incipient publishing industry it didn't +matter: it was a way to catch more profits and consumers. + +So authors without religious or political authority found a way +to sneak their names in printed text. It wasn't yet a function +of property---I don't like the word “function,” but I will use +it anyways---but a function of attribution: they wanted to publicy +be know as the human who wrote those texts. No God, no authority, +no institution, but a person of flesh and bone. + +But that also meant regular powerless people. Without backup +of God or King, who the fucks are you, little peasant? Publishers---aka +printers in those years---took advantage. That is why I did a +very problematic analogy, the fascitation to saw a work printed +with your name is similar to see a Wikipedia article about you. +You don't gain directly anything, only reputation. It relies +on you to made it profitable. + +During 18th century, authorship became a function of _individual_ +attribution, but not a function of property. So I think that +is were the notion of “creator” came out as an ace in the hole. +In Germany we can track one of the first robust attempts to empower +this new kind of powerless independent author. + +German Romanticism developed something that goes back to the +Renaissance: humans can also _create_ things. Sometimes we forget +that Christianity has been also a very messy set of beliefs. +The attempt to made a consistent, uniform and rationalized set +of beliefs goes back in the diversity of religious practices. +So you could accept that printing text lost its directly connection +to God's word while you could argue some kind of indirectly inspiration +beyond our corporeal world. And you don't have to rationalize +it: you can't prove it, you just feel it and know it. + +So german writers used that as foundations for independent authorship. +No God's word, no authorship, no institution, but a person inspired +by things beyond our world. The notion of “creation” has a very +strong religious and methaphysical backgrounds that we can't +just ignore them: act of creation means the capacity to bring +to this world something that it didn't belong to it. The relationship +between authorship and text turned out so imminent that even +nowadays we don't have any fucking idea why we accept as common +sense that authors have a superior and inalianeble bond to its +works. + +But before the expansionism of German Romanticism notion of author, +writers were seen more as producers that sold their work to the +owners of means of production. So while the invention of printing +facilitated a new kind of secular and indepent author, _in other +hand_ it summoned Authorship Fog: “Whenever you cast another +Book spell, if Spirits of Printing's Invention is in the command +zone or on the battlefield, create a 1/1 white Author creature +token with flying and indestructible.” As material as a printed +card we made magic to grant authors a creative function: the +ability to “produce from nothing.” + +Authors as creators is a cool metaphor, who doesn't want to have +some divine powers? In the abstract discussion about the relationship +between authors, texts and freedom of speech, it is just a perfect +fit. You don't have to rely in anything material to grasp all +of them as an unique phenomena. But in the concrete facts of +printed texts and the publishers abuse to authors you go beyond +attribution. You are not just linking an object to a subject. +Instead, you are grating property relationships between an object +and a subject. + +And property means nothing if you can't exploit it. At the beging +of publishing industry and during all 18th century, publishers +took advantage of this new kind of “property.” The invention +of the author as a property function was the rise of new legislation. +Germans and French jurists translated this speech to laws. + +I won't talk about the history of moral rights. Instead I want +to highlight how this gave a supposedly ethical, political and +legal justification of the individualization of cultural commodities. +Authorship began to be associated inalienably to individuals +and _a_ book started to mean _a_ reader. But not only that, the +possibilities of intelectual freedom were reduced to a particular +device: printed text. + +More freedom traslated to the need of more and more printed material. +More freedom implied the requirement of bigger and bigger publishing +industry. More freedom entailed the expansionism of cultural +capitalism. Books switched to commodities and authors became +its owners. Moral rights were never about the freedom of readers, +but who was the owner of that commodities. + +Books stopped to be sources of oral and local public debate and +became private devices for an “universal” public debate. Authorship +puts attribution in secondary place so indivudal ownership could +become its synonymous. A book for several readers and an author +as an id for an intellectual movement or institution became irrelevant +against a book as property for a particular reader and author. + +And we are sitting here reading all this shit without taking +to account that ones of the main wins of our neoliberal world +is that we have been talking about objects, individuals and production +of wealth. Who the fucks are the subjects who made all this publishing +shit possible? Where the fucks are the communities that in several +ways make possible the rise of authors? For fuck sake, why aren't +we talking about the maintenance of means of production? + +We aren't books and we aren't its authors. We aren't those individuals +who everybody are gonna relate to the books we are working on +and, of course, we lack of sense of community. We aren't the +ones who enjoy all that wealth generated by books production +but for sure we are the ones who made all that possible. We are +neglecting ourselves: change my mind. + +So don't come with those tales about the greatness of books for +our culture, the need of authorship to transfer wealth or to +give attribution and how important for our lifes is the publishing +production. + +* Did you know that books have been mainly devices of ideological + reproduction---most best-selling books aren't critical thinking + books that free our minds, but school books with its hidden + curriculum and selfhelp and erotic books that keep reproducing + basic exploitable stereotypes? +* Did you realize that authorship haven't been the best way + to transfer wealth or give attribution---even now more than + before authors have to paid in order to be published at the + same time that in the practice they lose all rights? +* Did you see how we keep to be worry about production no matter + what---it doesn't matter that it would imply bigger chains + of free labor or, as I prefer to say: chains of explotation + and “intellectual” slavery? + +Please, don't come with those tales, we already reached more +fertile fields that can generate way better stories.