Darkness

• And even if some few have somehow survived, they are moth-eaten and in a state of decay, and remembered about as well as if they had never existed.
• By making the manuscripts into a book, he would preserve the knowledge they contained – but not the manuscript, not the artefact itself.
• He does not mention how difficult his Byzantine manuscripts were to read and transcribe, even for someone familiar with the language.
• Every manuscript is its own text, its own space of knowledge, and an irreplaceable part of our shared cultural histories.

Preserving the Past

• Our knowledge of the past, and the wisdom we can gain from it, is bound in material objects – whether manuscripts, paintings, ruined buildings or clay pots – that are decaying.
• What will we preserve of the past?
• We are lucky if we can now read a text in 50 manuscripts.
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• Manuscript tourism became a popular activity for wealthy scholars like Sir Robert Cotton (1571-1631), whose collection became the core of the British Museum’s collection.
• Of course, many of these collectors simply stole or smuggled what they wanted from struggling monasteries in what are now Greece, Sinai and Israel.
• But their work made possible the rise of printed editions of classical and medieval works.
• Our modern editions of the Bible and the Iliad, for example, do not exactly match their underlying manuscripts.

Read more:
Dogs in the middle ages: what medieval writing tells us about our ancestors’ pets

Digital decay

• Even if we prefer the edited versions, printed books decay faster than manuscripts, and take up just as much space.
• Print does not solve the problem of preservation; it only postpones it.
• In the 20th century, digital scanning tools and computer-based storage seemed to offer a new kind of solution.

• Second, digital images are often in proprietary formats, meaning that without the library’s viewing software you cannot actually examine the manuscript.
• The digital format is still chained to its digital shelves in a private space.
• Third, as a recent cyber-attack on the British Library demonstrates, the digital space seems not to be safer than the physical one.
• The digital library space, with its proprietary viewing software and its specialised file formats, is now shuttered.

Conservation and accessibility

• Yet physical conservation comes at the expense of accessibility.
• We can, however, use advances in AI and computer technology to improve approaches to digital conservation and enable wider access to the uniqueness of individual manuscripts.
• To avoid digital decay, we need to devote the same attention to digital conservation as to material conservation.

• Images of manuscripts would then have a readable text and all the unique elements of the material original – its decorations and artistry, its errors and doodles.
• In this enhanced digital form, manuscripts could come to local museums, libraries and galleries, where they would be accessible to everyday visitors as well as specialists.
• But unlike him, we can now offer the experience of the manuscript as well as the text, and to a much wider audience.

Jonathan L. Zecher receives funding from the Templeton Religion Trust.

• It is inspired by Isabel Wilkerson’s 2020 book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.
• Caste is a system of classifying society in a hierarchical order in which some people are kept inferior and others superior.
• In doing so, she highlights how inhuman, unethical and unjust discriminatory practices happen irrespective of geographical location, local cultures and social norms.

Dalit stories in Hollywood

• I come from a Dalit background and I research Dalit representation in film.
• In the film, Wilkerson visits the Dr Ambedkar National Memorial in Delhi to learn about the lawyer and social activist’s life and work.
• This is the first time that Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar’s fight for the rights of India’s Dalits and other deprived classes has been portrayed in a Hollywood film.
• Ambedkar was a Dalit born at the very bottom of this ladder, in a group called the “untouchables”.

Origin and caste

• Using extreme close-ups, DuVernay shows Wilkerson’s inner turmoil as she learns more about India’s caste system.
• Origin doesn’t shy away from topics like untouchability.
• Another incident shows a father in the US who, in a bid to escape the trauma and humiliation of the caste system, named his firstborn daughter “Miss”.
• Despite the darkness of its subject matter, Origin doesn’t only expose the problem of marginalisation, it also offers a glimpse of hope and possibility.

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Neeraj Bunkar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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