ABSTRACT
The printing press has conventionally been identified as a vehicle for the spread of democracy and nationalism: most notably it has been designated an ‘agent of change’ by Elizabeth Eisenstein, a creator of the ‘bourgeois public sphere’ by Jürgen Habermas, and a constitutor of ‘imagined communities’ by Benedict Anderson. On the one hand, they show how imperialism and its legacy have defined textual production and the development of reading communities in Southern Africa, by revealing the networks and alliances controlling publishing and reading, both before and during the colonial and apartheid periods. Dissident circuits of newspaper publishing and reading were also a significant part of the anti-apartheid struggle. Firstly, it presents research into the formation of reading publics and the impact of reading cultures, which uncovers obscure but important reading communities and circuits of book distribution and reception. Dick's and Mokoena's chapters deepen our understanding of the range, impact and interpretive techniques at work in 19th-century South Africa's reading cultures.
