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The Politics of the Book. A Study on the Materiality of Ideas
Filipe Carreira da Silva, Mónica Brito Vieira
University Park : Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019
It is not the first time that sociology and the humanities turned to the performativity of books. This interest in what and how the books can do with their readers seems to be arising from the requirements for self-understanding and everlasting reorientation permeating current sociology. Perhaps, there is also a profound theoretical question of why certain books come to carry the performative force and others do not. For Bourdieu, Thomas Kuhn’s book on scientific revolutions had a powerful effect since it was utilized as a weapon against a unified science theory held and imposed by those in academically dominant positions.
Silva and Vieira’s account focuses on the reflexive standing of canonical books in the sociological tradition, of how these books frame their own story and thereby present themselves to be read in a certain way.
This book is about those who exercise power over books, over their meaning and their form. The statement that authors are not in full control of their book’s appearance currently is not generating any sentiments. It is widely accepted that a more competent specialist makes decisions about typography, binding, paper, that is, the process of publication in general. However, the book’s meaning is also emerging out of various interventions in which the author does not necessarily play a crucial role. In bookmaking, the author is supplemented by a collective of agents, including editors, translators, and commentators. While in many cases, these agents act in addition to the author, Silva and Vieira demonstrate that it is not exceptional that the book’s composition is entirely in this collective’s hand.
