Memory, materiality and the ethics of reading in the digital age

Abstract

Walter Benjamin’s ‘Unpacking My Library’ (1931) illuminates the loving relationship that can exist between readers and their books. Whilst stocking his shelves, Benjamin speaks of the spring tide of memories which surges toward any collector as he contemplates his possessions. Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector’s passions borders on the chaos of memories. More than that: the chance, the fate, that suffuse the past before my eyes are conspicuously present in the accustomed confusion of these books.1