The dust of books

A group of readers has gathered dust-covered books on a side table, including volumes on artificial intelligence, environmentalism, digital dependency, accelerationism, liminality, and other terms with the prefix “tecno.” While rereading Imaginarios y prácticas en la Argentina, by Graciela Batticuore, published in 2017 by Ampersand, they reflect on how revisiting texts from the 19th century might offer insight into understanding the 21st century. The book’s preface suggests returning to the past to better grasp the present. Some interests of these women remain relevant today. In 1816, a letter from a reader of El Observador spoke of the glass ceiling before it was named such: “We cannot aspire to the jobs and positions that men have taken exclusively through the law of the strongest.” In 1860, Eduarda Mansilla predicted the phenomenon known today as mansplaining in El médico de San Luis: “Here, we don’t get new literary news easily, an unheard-of advantage, since this way they read and reread their own books, which I’ve carefully ordered from Mendoza and Chile.” Other texts reveal greater differences compared to today’s mass-produced works, both in content and intention. La voz de la Mujer, an anarchist newspaper edited by Virginia Bolten, presented radical slogans such as “Our struggle is to death and without mercy” a century and a half ago. It had a political project, tone, and pedagogy rarely seen today. “Educate your children well!” the paper urged. “The worker can be satisfied because, after many hard work and hardships to raise her child, he will become a defender of the Homeland.” In an effort to avoid guilt for reading rather than engaging with new material, the reader seeks to benefit from noting that not everything has changed, yet what has changed is definitive. How obvious. Perhaps the best outcome of procrastinating on reading the books waiting on the side table is to let them filter through. Their pages take on the risk of vanishing like the dust that covers them. Their ambition is not posterity, but compliance with the temporal logic of social media. Unlike the writings from the 19th century by Eduarda Mansilla and the anonymous readers of El Observador, some seem old even months after publication. This does not sit well with authoritarians. The practice of professional and critical journalism is a fundamental pillar of democracy. That is why it disturbs those who believe themselves to be the sole owners of truth.