The human brain has a tendency to find order in disorder. Books on shelves somehow offer a sense of structure while the same books in crates or piles on the floor evoke little but chaos. But is there really more order in one and less in the other? And is one really superior to the other? Perhaps a library with books strewn on the floor or in mounds piled high to the ceiling would be a radical departure from some unspoken “universal” form of academia. An act of defying traditional patterns of structure is a defiance of the mind itself, it is resisting the natural tendency to find order. An ongoing struggle exists: how should books be organized? How should anything be organized? In the NYU bookstore, texts are arranged alphabetically by last name. The A’s and B’s are in one row while the G’s-I’s are in another. But then, there really is no reason for B to follow A. Alphabetical order– the universal sequencing of the letters– is merely a human attempt to regulate chaos.
This same need to compartmentalize transcends books. The idea of unifying a people, often under what Bhabha calls “naturalist traits” inherently creates a group of “other.” When people are sectioned off by color the same way books are with letters, a dichotomy exists– there is unity within each minority, but conflict within the whole. Hitler exploited the idealistic view of a classless society to unify a people while alienating another, and it was this alienation that strengthened the bonds within each individual community. Without this need to compartmentalize, is it possible for society to extend its horizons?
Is it possible that books in a pile could offer more to us than those on bookshelves?
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