The book as an object predisposed to interdisciplinarity

Abstract

The article discusses the book as an aesthetic and communicative object, ambiguous support for cultural content and a cultural object itself. I start from two metaphors, the window and the butterfly, to locate it in relation to the history of the press, graphic arts (illustration) and to new media cultural contexts. Then, I advocate an interdisciplinary mediation of the picture book as well of the writing as art frees the technical language teaching. The literary book, specially the illustrated book, can and should be incorporated into the reader in the ambience of art, as an object of conspicuous consumption and inventive as well. The emancipation to reading and writing as art may form the true operators and agents of culture, no matter which language or media. To produce these reflections, I poured myself a large theoretical grid, involving the areas of philosophy (Jacques Derrida), or Communication Design (Philip Meggs and Alston Purvis), History (Robert Darnton) and Sociology (Gisela Taschner) among others.