Gandhi's Printing Press : : Experiments in Slow Reading / / Isabel Hofmeyr.
At the same time that Gandhi, as a young lawyer in South Africa, began fashioning the tenets of his political philosophy, he was absorbed by a seemingly unrelated enterprise: creating a newspaper. Gandhi's Printing Press is an account of how this project, an apparent footnote to a titanic caree...
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Superior document: | Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Asian Studies Backlist (2000-2014) eBook Package |
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Place / Publishing House: | Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, , [2013] ©2013 |
Year of Publication: | 2013 |
Language: | English |
Online Access: | |
Physical Description: | 1 online resource :; 5 halftones, 4 maps |
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Other title: | Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Printing Cultures in the Indian Ocean World -- 2. Gandhi's Printing Press -- 3. Indian Opinion -- 4. Binding Pamphlets, Summarizing India -- 5. A Gandhian Theory of Reading -- Conclusion -- Appendix: Pamphlets Reprinted from Indian Opinion -- Notes -- A Note on Sources -- Acknowledgments -- Index |
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Summary: | At the same time that Gandhi, as a young lawyer in South Africa, began fashioning the tenets of his political philosophy, he was absorbed by a seemingly unrelated enterprise: creating a newspaper. Gandhi's Printing Press is an account of how this project, an apparent footnote to a titanic career, shaped the man who would become the world-changing Mahatma. Pioneering publisher, experimental editor, ethical anthologist-these roles reveal a Gandhi developing the qualities and talents that would later define him. Isabel Hofmeyr presents a detailed study of Gandhi's work in South Africa (1893-1914), when he was the some-time proprietor of a printing press and launched the periodical Indian Opinion. The skills Gandhi honed as a newspaperman-distilling stories from numerous sources, circumventing shortages of type-influenced his spare prose style. Operating out of the colonized Indian Ocean world, Gandhi saw firsthand how a global empire depended on the rapid transmission of information over vast distances. He sensed that communication in an industrialized age was becoming calibrated to technological tempos. But he responded by slowing the pace, experimenting with modes of reading and writing focused on bodily, not mechanical, rhythms. Favoring the use of hand-operated presses, he produced a newspaper to contemplate rather than scan, one more likely to excerpt Thoreau than feature easily glossed headlines. Gandhi's Printing Press illuminates how the concentration and self-discipline inculcated by slow reading, imbuing the self with knowledge and ethical values, evolved into satyagraha, truth-force, the cornerstone of Gandhi's revolutionary idea of nonviolent resistance. |
Format: | Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web. |
ISBN: | 9780674074743 9783110649772 9783110317350 9783110317121 9783110317114 9783110374889 9783110374902 9783110442205 9783110459517 9783110662566 |
DOI: | 10.4159/harvard.9780674074743 |
Access: | restricted access |
Hierarchical level: | Monograph |
Statement of Responsibility: | Isabel Hofmeyr. |