The Library is on Fire
“The Library is on Fire: Wood as Cultural Signifier”, by M.W.Blackburn, was published by ctheory (“an international journal of theory, technology, and culture) in January of 2007. The first draft was prepared for a conference, Words, Images, and the Framing of Social Reality, Graduate Faculty department of Liberal Studies, New School of Social Research.
Here is the link to the article
At the conference, a small homemade pamphlet (with an earlier version of the text published by ctheory) was distributed throughout the room. It was illustrated by small watercolors.
The paper was not read aloud; people could read the dense network of theory and observation later. Instead, other examples of burning libraries and perverted uses of wood were relayed and the oral transmission of lost information provided another model for storage, fragments passed from body to body. In that moment, a news story was retold- of US soldiers in Iraq bulldozing an ancient fruit orchard because village interviews had not revealed any data that was useful for the army. One soldier blared jazz music as he carried out his orders –crushing palm, orange, and lemon trees. Another soldier broke down and cried. The villagers stood beside. When the bulldozer was turned off, they gathered the wood for fire.
“Nusayef Jassim, one of 32 farmers who saw their fruit trees destroyed, said: “They told us that the resistance fighters hide in our farms, but this is not true. They didn’t capture anything. They didn’t find any weapons.”"
“…Asked how much his lost orchard was worth, Nusayef Jassim said in a
distraught voice: “It is as if someone cut off my hands and you asked
me how much my hands were worth.” [from The Independent, October 12, 2003]
