Redacción de 3
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# Don't come with those tales
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> @published 2019/05/05, 12:00 {.published}
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I love books. I love them so much that I even decide to make
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a living from them---probably a very bad career decision. But
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I can't idealize that love.
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During school and university I was taught that I should love
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books. Actually, some teachers made me clear that it was the
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only way I could get my bachelor's degree. Because books are
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one of the main freedom devices in our shitty world, right? Not
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loving books is like the will to stay in a cave---hello, Plato.
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Not celebrating its greatness is just one step to support antidemocratic
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regimes. And while I was learning to love books, of course I
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also learn to respect its “creators,” until I desire to be one
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of them.
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I don't think it is casual that the development of what we mean
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by book is independent from the developments of capitalism and
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what we understand by author. Maybe correlation; maybe intersection;
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but definetly not separates stories.
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Let's start with a common place: the invention of printing. Yeah,
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it is an arbitraty and problematic start. We could say that books
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and authors goes far before that; therefore, they aren't a product
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of what it would became capitalism. But what we have in that
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particularly place in history is the standardization and massification
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of a practice. It didn't happen from day to night, but little
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by little all the methodological and technical diversity became
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more homogeneous. And with that, we were able to made books not
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as luxury commodities, but as objects of everyday use.
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And not just books, but printed text in general. Before the invention
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of printing, we could barely see text in our surroundings. What
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surprise me about printing it is not the capacity of production
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that we reached, but how that technology normalized the existence
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of text in our daily basis.
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Newspapers first and now social media relies on that normalization
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to generate the idea of an “universal” public debate---I don't
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know if it is actually “public” if almost all popular newspapers
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and social media platforms are own by corporations and its criterias;
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but let's pretend it is a minor issue. And public debate supposedly
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incentivates democracy.
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Before Enlightenment the owners of printed text realized its
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freedom potential. Most churchs and kingdoms tried to control
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it. The Protestant Church first and then the Enlightment and
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emerging capitalist enterprises hijacked the control of public
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debate; specifically who owns the means of printed text production,
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who decides the languages worthy to print and who sets its main
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reader.
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Maybe it is a bad analogy but printed text in newspapers, books
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and journals were so fascinating like nowadays is digital “content”
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over the Internet. But what I mean is that there were many people
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who tried to have that control and power. And most of them failed
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and keep failing.
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So during 18th century books started to have another meaning.
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They ceased to be mainly devices of God's word to be _a_ device
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of freedom of speech. Thanks to the firsts emerging capitalists
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we got means for secular thinking. Acts of censorship became
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evident acts of political restriction instead of acts against
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sinners.
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The invention of printing created so big demand of printed text
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that it actually generated the publishing industry. Selfpublishing
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to satisfy internal institutional demand openned the place to
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an industry for new citizens readers. A luxury and religious
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object became a commodity in the “free” market.
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While printed text surpassed almost all restrictions, freedom
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of speech rised hand-to-hand freedom of enterprise---the debate
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between Free Software Movement and Open Source Initiative relies
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in an old and more general debate: how much freedom can we grant
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in order to secure freedom? But it also developed other freedom
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that was fastened by religious or political authorities: the
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freedom to be identify as an author.
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How we understand authorship in our days depends in the process
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where the notion of author became more closed to the idea of
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“creator.” And it is actually a very interesting semantic transfer.
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_In one way_ the invention of printing mechanized and improved
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a practice that it was believed to be done with God's help. Trithemius
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got so horrified that printing wasn't welcome. But with new Spirits---freedoms
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of enterprise and speech---what was seen even as a demonic invention
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became one of the main technologies that still defines and reproduces
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the idea of humanity.
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This openned the opportunity to independent authors. Printed
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text wasn't anymore a matter of God's word or authorities but
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a secular and more ephemeral Human's word. The massification
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of publishing also openned the gates for less relevant and easy-to-read
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printed texts; but for the incipient publishing industry it didn't
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matter: it was a way to catch more profits and consumers.
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So authors without religious or political authority found a way
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to sneak their names in printed text. It wasn't yet a function
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of property---I don't like the word “function,” but I will use
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it anyways---but a function of attribution: they wanted to publicy
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be know as the human who wrote those texts. No God, no authority,
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no institution, but a person of flesh and bone.
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But that also meant regular powerless people. Without backup
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of God or King, who the fucks are you, little peasant? Publishers---aka
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printers in those years---took advantage. That is why I did a
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very problematic analogy, the fascitation to saw a work printed
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with your name is similar to see a Wikipedia article about you.
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You don't gain directly anything, only reputation. It relies
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on you to made it profitable.
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During 18th century, authorship became a function of _individual_
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attribution, but not a function of property. So I think that
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is were the notion of “creator” came out as an ace in the hole.
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In Germany we can track one of the first robust attempts to empower
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this new kind of powerless independent author.
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German Romanticism developed something that goes back to the
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Renaissance: humans can also _create_ things. Sometimes we forget
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that Christianity has been also a very messy set of beliefs.
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The attempt to made a consistent, uniform and rationalized set
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of beliefs goes back in the diversity of religious practices.
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So you could accept that printing text lost its directly connection
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to God's word while you could argue some kind of indirectly inspiration
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beyond our corporeal world. And you don't have to rationalize
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it: you can't prove it, you just feel it and know it.
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So german writers used that as foundations for independent authorship.
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No God's word, no authorship, no institution, but a person inspired
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by things beyond our world. The notion of “creation” has a very
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strong religious and methaphysical backgrounds that we can't
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just ignore them: act of creation means the capacity to bring
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to this world something that it didn't belong to it. The relationship
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between authorship and text turned out so imminent that even
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nowadays we don't have any fucking idea why we accept as common
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sense that authors have a superior and inalianeble bond to its
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works.
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But before the expansionism of German Romanticism notion of author,
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writers were seen more as producers that sold their work to the
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owners of means of production. So while the invention of printing
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facilitated a new kind of secular and indepent author, _in other
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hand_ it summoned Authorship Fog: “Whenever you cast another
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Book spell, if Spirits of Printing's Invention is in the command
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zone or on the battlefield, create a 1/1 white Author creature
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token with flying and indestructible.” As material as a printed
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card we made magic to grant authors a creative function: the
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ability to “produce from nothing.”
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Authors as creators is a cool metaphor, who doesn't want to have
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some divine powers? In the abstract discussion about the relationship
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between authors, texts and freedom of speech, it is just a perfect
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fit. You don't have to rely in anything material to grasp all
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of them as an unique phenomena. But in the concrete facts of
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printed texts and the publishers abuse to authors you go beyond
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attribution. You are not just linking an object to a subject.
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Instead, you are grating property relationships between an object
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and a subject.
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And property means nothing if you can't exploit it. At the beging
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of publishing industry and during all 18th century, publishers
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took advantage of this new kind of “property.” The invention
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of the author as a property function was the rise of new legislation.
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Germans and French jurists translated this speech to laws.
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I won't talk about the history of moral rights. Instead I want
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to highlight how this gave a supposedly ethical, political and
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legal justification of the individualization of cultural commodities.
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Authorship began to be associated inalienably to individuals
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and _a_ book started to mean _a_ reader. But not only that, the
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possibilities of intelectual freedom were reduced to a particular
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device: printed text.
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More freedom traslated to the need of more and more printed material.
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More freedom implied the requirement of bigger and bigger publishing
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industry. More freedom entailed the expansionism of cultural
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capitalism. Books switched to commodities and authors became
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its owners. Moral rights were never about the freedom of readers,
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but who was the owner of that commodities.
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Books stopped to be sources of oral and local public debate and
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became private devices for an “universal” public debate. Authorship
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puts attribution in secondary place so indivudal ownership could
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become its synonymous. A book for several readers and an author
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as an id for an intellectual movement or institution became irrelevant
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against a book as property for a particular reader and author.
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And we are sitting here reading all this shit without taking
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to account that ones of the main wins of our neoliberal world
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is that we have been talking about objects, individuals and production
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of wealth. Who the fucks are the subjects who made all this publishing
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shit possible? Where the fucks are the communities that in several
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ways make possible the rise of authors? For fuck sake, why aren't
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we talking about the maintenance of means of production?
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We aren't books and we aren't its authors. We aren't those individuals
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who everybody are gonna relate to the books we are working on
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and, of course, we lack of sense of community. We aren't the
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ones who enjoy all that wealth generated by books production
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but for sure we are the ones who made all that possible. We are
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neglecting ourselves: change my mind.
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So don't come with those tales about the greatness of books for
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our culture, the need of authorship to transfer wealth or to
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give attribution and how important for our lifes is the publishing
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production.
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* Did you know that books have been mainly devices of ideological
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reproduction---most best-selling books aren't critical thinking
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books that free our minds, but school books with its hidden
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curriculum and selfhelp and erotic books that keep reproducing
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basic exploitable stereotypes?
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* Did you realize that authorship haven't been the best way
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to transfer wealth or give attribution---even now more than
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before authors have to paid in order to be published at the
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same time that in the practice they lose all rights?
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* Did you see how we keep to be worry about production no matter
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what---it doesn't matter that it would imply bigger chains
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of free labor or, as I prefer to say: chains of explotation
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and “intellectual” slavery?
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Please, don't come with those tales, we already reached more
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fertile fields that can generate way better stories.
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