invisiblestories:

“Exile was already there in paper […] The pathos of paper already obeys a law of the genre — but why not yield to it? It is an inconsolable nostalgia for the book […] It is a nostalgia for paper before the reproducible “impression,” for paper once virginal, both sensitive and impassive, both friendly and resistant […] a nostalgia for the color or weight, the thickness and the resistance of a sheet — its folds, the back of its recto-verso, the fantasies of contact, caress, of intimacy, resistance, or promise: the infinite desire of the copyist, the cult of calligraphy, an ambiguous love for the scarcity of writing, a fascination for the word incorporated in paper.”

- Sam Rowe quoting Derrida in “Fantasies of Contact: Erica Baum, Susan Howe, and the Poetics of Paper” (at Full Stop)