Addressed to the Nines: The Victorian Archive and the Disappearance of the Book (original) (raw)

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady, "But it's turtles all the way down!" (1) This paper is, in part, about the question of ground, a question that I would say lies at the heart or, rather, at the base of not only cyberspace but also postmodern culture generally. I wish also to continue a dialogue about Victorian studies itself, one taken up in a panel at the 2004 NAVSA conference by Amanda Anderson, Catherine Gallagher, and Matthew Rowlinson and published in the following spring issue of Victorian Studies. 1 I take as my point of departure Rowlinson's astute observation that "the association of NAVSA with a print journal establishes specificand arguably anachronistic-practices of reading and writing as the material basis of its members' collective identity" (241). He points out that NAVSA established this "arguably anachronistic" relationship despite the fact that "the founding of NAVSA. .. takes place in the context of far-reaching changes in the forms of scholarly publishing and communication" (241). Responding to Rowlinson's comments, I wish also to continue the discussion articulated by Anderson and Gallagher regarding the dominant theoretical maneuvers of the last twenty years of Victorian studies.

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