Reseña de Chartier, R. (2021) Lectura y pandemia. Conversaciones. Katz

In 1999, with the turn of the century around the corner and with only a few of his books translated into Spanish, "Cultura escrita, literatura e historia. Coacciones transgredidas y libertades restringidas" was published in Mexico. It was there that the conversations between Carlos Aguirre Anaya, Jesús Anaya Rosique, Daniel Goldín, and Antonio Saborit with Roger Chartier were edited. They analyzed the changes in book formats, the mutations of the various links in the chain of text publication, and the historiography of the latter half of the 20th century, among many other topics. Shortly thereafter, in 2000, the Gedisa publishing house, under the direction of Emilia Ferreiro, released the dialogues that Jean Lebrun had with Chartier in 1997, titled "Las revoluciones de la cultura escrita. Diálogos e intervenciones." In this work, the changes in the concepts of author, text, reader, reading, and library were addressed, and the impact of digitalization on the different stages of text production, circulation, and appropriation was analyzed. Chartier's interviews and dialogues share something in common: their trust in conversation as a space of civility, of listening - which incorporates contributions from others' voices - in order to continue the discussion. This dialogue, at least in its transcription that reaches us as an echo of a fleeting but polished past in the stages of correction and editing, recovers the value of words in the public sphere. This was one of the central themes in our author's historiography, using it as a backdrop to contemplate the book and reading in 18th-century France.