Description

The aim of the main sections of issue 5 (2015), edited by Jadwiga Maszewska, is to draw attention to the growing significance of collecting, archiving, and publishing. As Jeremy Braddock argues in Collecting as Modernist Practice, the material collection and the anthology should both be considered as an “authored work,” and, following Bourdieu, a “system of positions.” The history of collecting and publishing in the 20th century—“from Peggy Guggenheim to the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, TX”—illustrates a widespread development and framing of how literary and cultural materials are received. Publishers, editors, librarians, and curators have all played a fundamental role in authoring and shaping the reception, preservation, and influence of textual and cultural objects. Thus, the fifth issue of Text Matters is organized, for the most part, around the themes of collecting, anthologizing, and publishing in the context of North American literature and cultural practice, with special emphasis on the visual arts. Among the topics addressed are actual sites and institutions, such as the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, or the Toronto-based Coach House Press; archival practices, e.g. the problem of preserving works created in the ephemeral digital media; the anthologizing impulse, for instance in the wake of tragedies such as 9/11; and literary representations or figures of the archive, e.g. in post-apocalyptic fiction. The special section entitled “Exhibitions” concerns artistic practices variously connected to the city of Łódź, the journal’s home, and includes discussions of works by Mieke Bal and Michelle Williams Gamaker. The final section involves conversations with influential translation theorist Sherry Simon and foremost Polish Americanist Agnieszka Salska.