Libraries in the margins
02. A matter of design
To be in the margins is to be part of the whole but outside the main body.
bell hooks. In Feminist Theory: from Margin to Centre, 1984.
It seems that in our mental schemes, margins, whatever their type, hold the position and fulfill the function they perform on a printed page.
In that context, it is a matter of basic editorial design: a margin is the empty space surrounding a given block of text (or an illustration — which, in terms of content, is equivalent). Its function is to highlight that text, to give it meaning as “the important thing” on the page, to balance it.
The text obeys certain (generally rigid) rules of composition, organization, structuring and distance that are no longer valid outside this “block”: the lines, for example, do not exist in the margins, because there, in the empty space, there is nothing to organize, nothing to regulate…
Generally speaking, it is considered that the wider the margin, the more the text “breathes” and the more elegant the publication. The emptier the margin, the more the writing stands out.
[Although the most useful and functional books are those with narrow margins. And most illustrated books do not have them at all].
It so happens that, ignoring the wishes of designers, editors and printers, margins often serve other, quite different functions.
***
Disregarding the rigid linear and monolithic structure of the block-printed text, the margin, with all its emptiness, gives space for commentary, gloss, note and addition, and allows for clarification, definition, and protest.
The old bookmakers and designers used to take advantage of the margins to include titles, comments or some definitions, an old tradition that now seems to have disappeared from the publishing industry. Be that as it may, margins have always been the spaces where opinions on the main text are noted. It is where the counter-discourse is recorded: what the lines do not say appears there. In that “blank” space there are correction marks, mocking monikers, crude reactions between big exclamation marks, a thousand and one colors of pencil and ink, references to other works that challenge a certain statement…
It is there that what is truly interesting develops — or, at least, there is the possibility of it developing: exchange, thought, reflection… In their versatility, the margins have always defied the desperate attempt of the written word to fix an opinion forever, in an immovable way.
Paradoxically, the wider the margin — and, consequently, the more elegant and respectable the text — the more room there is for criticism and observation, and even for jokes, banter, or plain and simple rebellion.
The margin thus becomes a space of freedom, empty only in appearance: in it, possibilities are concentrated. Anything can happen in the margin: it is beyond everything that the printed text represents. Since it is blank, it can be occupied and, since it has no rules, it offers space for any proposal.
Seen from such a perspective, many lines and possibilities of symbolic analysis open up: the margins and the “peripheries” as forcibly empty spaces, designed to give meaning and sense to the “centers”, but where comments and criticisms end up developing, sometimes with contents much more valuable than what is presented as the main element. The margins as places where the central rules do not necessarily apply. The margins, in short, as a space that rebels against the emptiness that has been planned for it and against its original function and becomes a point of lively debate and critical construction.
Or of mockery and derision, simply.
***
Assuming the editorial simile, it could be said that the printed text is the equivalent of the official, hegemonic, academic discourse: fixed, static in its norms, with its constant typography, its rigid lines, and its balanced spaces. It is the social discourse that shapes us, that tells us what is “the right thing to do” and clearly indicates which are the limits from which we cannot leave.
Beyond are the margins.
And in those margins are (though not always) the annotations. The voice of the margins. What those spaces that are not empty, that are not blank, tell us.
Those marks are classically called marginalia (or scholia), and include notes, glosses, annotations, critiques, scribbles, drawings, corrections, and other elements. Sometimes these marginalia have provided access to other texts, some of them persecuted, censored and destroyed, and have opened doors to a different knowledge. It could be said that they have served to improve, in very general terms, the understanding of the text.
[Or the experience of reading it, especially in the case of extremely boring contents.]
The tradition of marginalia declined after the invention of the printing press, although its use continued well into the 20th century, especially in print. Today, some e-book models have been designed to allow for annotations. Some research has been done on the value of “margin notes” as a critical synthesis of knowledge, scholarly or otherwise….
…and such notes have been studied in authors such as Poe or Coleridge. In fact, some of these famous marginalia have been collected and published as books, adapting these once free contents to the rigid rules of the printed text. The voice from the margins has thus become hegemonic and has become everywhere as the new norm. But, in the process, it has lost its freedom, its freshness and, in many cases, its value.
***
Aware of the power of the margins, the “center” has labeled everything that inhabits it as “marginal”. A label with connotations of something improper, incorrect, that does not conform to the norms, that is out of bounds. Something that does not have enough value, continuing with the editorial simile, to have been included in the printed block.
Although its value resides, precisely, in having been left out of it, free of everything.
