Daisy, 11/13 Birkert

Attending Sven Birkert’s lecture was extremely interesting. He began the lecture by reading out loud an expert from his book about Kertesz on Reading. To Birkert, Kertesz captures people in the most private of freefall. The image is informative, but it also allows for a vast screen of interpretation. Macherey talked about this opportunity to interpret a gap within the text. The gap is the most important part of a text because it is where the most meaning is created. During the lecture, Birkert talked about the different interpretations we can make from the photos. Within Birkert’s photos, we are unaware of what the individuals are reading, this allows for open-ended interpretation. Birkert said “is there anything more open ended then an opened book?” He talked about how a text is momentarily mute until we read it; we are the ones that give meaning to the text. To Macherey, the most important part of text is what is not said and I think that Birkert would agree.
Birkert went on to talk about the impact of technology on reading. The invention of the Kindle has allowed readers to digitally read books. There is no longer a need to visit a bookstore or library because you can wirelessly download books to your technological device. People are moving from reading a printed page to looking at a lit screen. Birkert discussed that for text to arrive on the Kindle, the text has to be detached. Benjamin would say that the detachment of the text causes a loss of authenticity. To me, holding a book in your hands and turning the pages is a much different experience. When a book is turned digital it loses a part of itself. Birkert said that a printed book has a lasting impression; it is an entity dense with association. What we are reading might be the same, but the signification is much different. I like what Sven Birkert said about a book turned digital, he said it has been vaporized, made ghostly. Kindles are not new; they are just a new way of looking at the old. This made me think of Lyotard’s idea of bricolage. We think that the Kindle is something new, but really it is just made up of the old, old books that is. A Kindle is like a generic machine that produces the same thing over and over. The digital books read within the kindle seem no different than the next. However, the books on their own, separate from the digital device, have much more meaning and difference. It seems as if the Kindle is a way to equate all books and their meanings, ignoring their differences.