Time and the Materiality of Reading

Abstract

This review is devoted to several events that took place in the field of the study of the materiality of reading at the round table of the Higher School of Social Research (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales), held at the Alcazar Library in Marseille. The organisers of the round table designated its topic as “Reading Time” (Le temps de la lecture). The second element of the review was the recent publication of a book by André Frejomil “Art of the Poacher: a Material history of reading according to Michel de Certeau” (Arts de braconner: une histoire matérielle de la lecture chez Michel de Certeau). The material history of reading, an activity rather perceived as immaterial, comes methodologically from analysis of Michel Foucault’s discourse. As such it is sensitive not only to the materiality of the signs placed on the page, but also to the context of the publication that determines the meaning of what is being read (and not only written and “programmed” by the author). It restores the rights of the material bearers of texts and considers them, along with the techniques of the body-at-reading, as factors involved in the deployment of procedures of comprehension. The material history of reading allows us to see our object as an empirical, social and historically contextualised practice involved in certain communities — not only “interpretative” communities but also in those that could be called “motor”.