Book History

This paper makes a methodological and theoretical intervention into the direction(s) in which the field of book history is progressing. It is argued that is essential to reaffirming two somewhat neglected aspects of Robert Darnton’s communications circuit—its holism and its internationalism—as we contemplate the future of the discipline today. To get a clearer sense of the stakes involved, and to approach these broader methodological concerns from the perspective of African studies specifically, attention is given to an idea for a holistic and international study of the book that arose independently of Darnton’s, in South Africa. In the 1990s, J.M. Coetzee proposed a course that sought to examine the history of the book in Africa. The implications of this thinking allow us to delineate significant opportunities for book history as an interdisciplinary field that can contribute to, and ideally reshape, the future of literary studies in and beyond Africa.