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Juliette De Maeyer, Aleksandra Kaminska & Ghislain Thibault

Material Histories of Paper


ISBN: 978-3-906817-16-3
DOI: 10.13098/infoclio.ch-lb-0012
Publication date: 2024

Abstract


Paper is a material that is both mundane and omnipresent. Despite increasing efforts towards digitization and the promises of a paperless world, it remains a part of our daily lives. Following in the theoretical footsteps of the “material turn,” this anthology proposes to approach the history of paper from the perspective of its materialities. This means a consideration of paper as more than just a writing surface that carries marks and messages, but as a material whose at times contradictory physical qualities are in themselves significant: fragile yet robust, ephemeral yet permanent. Considering such characteristics draws attention to the presence of paper in the world and highlights its many roles in human society: in the making of things and infrastructures, the maintenance of relationships, the safekeeping of memory and history, and much more.

Taking advantage of the dynamic and trans-disciplinary research on paper, this collections is structured around five chapter themes—“Creating Paper,” “Moving Paper,” “Organizing (with) Paper,” “Manipulating Paper,” and “Enduring Paper”—each of which sheds a different light on the way paper acts in the world and how we act with paper. While these chapters do not exhaust the history of paper, they aim to span different periods and cultural contexts to show the magnitude of paper as one of the infrastructures of human society.