Within (and for) this course, I have read, reflected, said and written so much about materiality of media, that it has become a challenge to not comment on the materiality of every evocative object I see on our blogsite. This, of course, is in large part due to the very first assignment which gave me this new lens to look at things through. Now I get to analyse the importance of materiality in everything I touch and loan the only physical copy of “Making” in the library over and over again (sorry). So, obviously, I cannot go past the question of materiality of books and knowledge in the case of Umberto Eco and his majestic library of the world. 

Library of the world

A large part, if not all, of the documentary either takes place in or is based around Umberto Eco’s impressive library of over 30,000 books: it is mentioned that civil engineers were worried Eco’s collection would be too heavy for the building to hold it (which is wildly impressive if you ask me). 

It is natural that a scholar, professor and thinker would have a large library of his own. Umberto Eco valued physical books deeply and has been gathering them throughout his life – academic writings, comics and manga, encyclopedias, anything that he found interesting, really. But Eco’s library was not just for storing, – this can be done online, too, – but accumulating over time, displaying and, most importantly – interacting with books, which is what brings the importance to physicality of his library. Interacted by adults who get to curate, annotate, leave their bookmarks in, but also by Eco’s grandson. He remembers reading practically ancient books as a child. Because knowledge cannot and must not be simply accumulated by one person without sharing it, and because most grandparents have a soft spot for their grandkids. I think this particular moment stuck with me the most, because we are so used to seeing older books protected from destruction, and it was so fascinating to hear about the other perspective on that. I doubt my grandparents would ever let me touch a medieval book should they’ve had it (they’re both historians, so I would actually expect them to). In the documentary, Eco describes the difference between a bibliomaniac and bibliophile as such: the former would secretly flip through his collection in the evening like Scrooge McDuck bathing in his dollars, the latter would want people to know about the wonder of the book they are holding. 

Given Umberto Eco’s openness about his library and its treasures, given that his family donated it to the public and I doubt they’d go against his will, I believe it is safe to assume Umberto Eco was a bibliophile. 

Physicality

When explaining the inconvenience of e-books for him, Eco says books “must be touched with hands”, re-read, underlined, dog-eared. If you cannot interact with the book meaningfully, it is a different, less fulfilling process, so why settle for a book in your phone, if you can have it in your lap? 

This, of course, brings us to “Making”, in which Ingold argues that meaning and knowledge is co-produced through human-material interaction, not simply transmitted through abstract content. In the same way as a potter both changes and is changed by the clay through the means of a pottery wheel, so does the reader both affect and be affected by the knowledge through the means of a physical book. The reader adds to the knowledge in the book by meaningfully interacting with it: underlining what matters, questioning paragraphs that don’t make sense, dog-earing the most important pages. And the knowledge, obviously, also changes the reader: their perception of the world, their thoughts, their actions, in the best of scenarios. We read with the book, as Ingold would say.  

True or real?

Another connection between Eco’s library and physicality is the question of truthfulness. One of the most beautiful things about Eco’s library is his passion for untrue knowledge: scholars who have been proven wrong, theories that were debunked, conspiracy theories, you name it. In Eco’s library, the discredited is not discarded: it is archived, annotated, and re-read with attention and affection.

The documentary focuses, in part, on Athanasius Kircher, a German polymath: jack of all trades, a master of both all trades, but also somehow not really. He managed to both completely misinterpret Egyptian hieroglyphics and notice the inconsistency in magnetic north. He suggested plague’s reasons lying in microorganisms and went on to describe dragons with the same vigor. But wrong or not, Kircher is forever remembered for his writings and drawings: Eco specifically implies their significance. The schemes, diagrams, illustrations all provide a layer of validity to the information, because lies are more interesting to prove.

Authority of the physical

But more interestingly, I want to discuss the effect of materiality on the perceived truthfulness of the media. In “Always Already New”, Lisa Gitelman explores how the physicality of print media has influenced perceptions of the written word as authoritative and truthful. She claims that physical qualities of books, such as their weight and texture, mediates to the viewer the sense of legitimacy that digital media often lacks. In the nineteenth century, Gitelman explains, print’s authority was derived from its tangibility: its position of a fixed media created the assumption of stability and truth. This “fixity”, as James Secord calls it, glorifies “textual authenticity and legitimates textual evidence”, says Gitelman. 

But once the industrial revolution did its thing and industrial printing rose, so did the mass literacy and so did the critical attention to those texts. I find it very insightful how Gitelman explains it: she says that before the mass publications, reading went hand in hand with appreciation of the text, not its interpretation. Now that more and more people were able to publish anything, “mass literacy met cheap editions” and it changed the public’s perception of physical media’s authority. So here is a quick reminder that truth is not guaranteed by any one medium but negotiated through it.

Eco’s library, of course, mostly comes from the times before industrial printing, the books there often being as wrong about the world as they seem to be correct: the books are heavy, large, leather-bound, old as time and therefore radiate the aura of higher knowledge and ultimate wisdom. This is why, I believe, it is so interesting to study this contrast between the authority-mediating form and the dilly-dally content.

Conclusion

In Eco’s library, in Ingold’s book, and in Gitelman’s reflections on print and digital media, the material form of knowledge is inseparable from its content and meaning. Truth and understanding are not abstract or disembodied, they are shaped through interaction. By underlining your favourite quotes, by weaving baskets, by touching what you read. If knowledge lives through material contact, a book is never only a vessel for ideas – it is a collaborator in their creation. I’m sorry, but the medium is still the message. To read, make, or preserve knowledge is always to engage with its material body. So go touch a book. Maybe ask me to return “Making” to the library so you can loan it yourself. 

---

Works cited:

Ferrario, Davide. Umberto Eco: The Library of the World. Italy: Rossofuoco, 2022. Documentary Film.

Gitelman, Lisa. Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006.

Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. London: Routledge, 2013.

Picture and text by Bara Bogantseva