Garrett 1999

Jeffrey Garrett. "Redefining Order in the German Library, 1775-1825." Eighteenth-Century Studies 33.1 (Fall 1999). Web.

• For all its pregnancy as an image in Western thought and literature, the library, as a real existing site of memory, order, and meaning creation, is commonly overlooked in the framework of cultural-historical studies. This omission is unfortunate, since, as Roger Chartier observes, "no 'order of discourse' is separable from 'the order of books' with which it is contemporaneous." [Forms and Meanings 23] Indeed, to use the categories Foucault introduced in The Order of Things, the library spatializes some of our most important cultural discourses, in particular those of general grammar and natural history. But the reverse of Chartier's dictum is true, too: the order of books cannot be understood without reference to the order of discourse of which it is both a part and an expression. This broader consciousness could guide the work of library historians, but it rarely does. Instead, students of library history seem to cultivate by choice a theory-free antiquarianism in treatments of their topic. Perhaps the astonishing fecundity of the library as a topos in modern literature, from Musil to Eco, is an attempt to create an alternative venue for a discussion that cultural historians and library historians alike have been reluctant to undertake.
  • partly as Knight 2015 argues because bibliographical control seems natural and reasonable
  • McKenzie 1986: library as text
• Foucauldian "archaeological" approach to the history of German libraries