“恐书症”是一本关于物质书籍的书，它讲述了从苏美尔到智能手机的5000年写作历史中，物质书籍是如何受到照顾和损坏的。它的出发点是由数字媒体取代实体书所隐含的“书的死亡”的当代理念，伴随着21世纪的偏执狂和文学启示录经历。它将对无所不知和遗忘的双重恐惧追溯到古巴比伦和埃及的写作起源，然后追溯到谷歌时代。它揭示了从中国第一位皇帝到纳粹德国的藏书恐惧症，以及世界宗教和文学中关于藏书癖和藏书学的平行故事。书籍暗示了以身体形式体现的认知内容，身体在其中与大脑合作。在它的核心，这种身体和思想，或文字和精神的关系，始终保持着一种神秘感。宗教是建立在圣书之上的，圣书也是违法行为的场所，因此书写既是神圣的，也是亵渎的。在世俗社会中，这些复杂的情感被转化为意识形态和宽容的概念。在互联网模棱两可的未来，数字非物质性再次威胁着人类的平衡。
恐书症是一部全球性的历史，涵盖六大洲和七种宗教，描述了过去三十个世纪（以及更早的几个世纪）中每一个世纪的书面例子。它讨论的主题包括不同种类的人类脚本的起源；文本媒体的发展，如卷轴、抄本、印刷书籍和人工智能；图书馆的收集和破坏；将书籍用作圣物、护身符或神殿；以及识字在奴隶制、异端、亵渎、审查和迫害历史中的地位。它提出了一个写作理论，它如何与语言、图像和信息，或与模仿、人格和政治的概念相联系。源于牛津大学英语系的克莱伦登讲座，仇视书籍的方法遍及书籍史；比较宗教；从柏拉图到黑格尔和弗洛伊德的哲学；以及一系列从古代到当代的全球文学作品。它以文本形式、实物和艺术作品进行了丰富的阐释，其灵感来源于书籍在读者的情感、精神、身体和想象生活中始终（并将继续）具有的力量。
Bibliophobia: The End and the Beginning of the Book
Bibliophobia is a book about material books, how they are cared for, and how they are damaged, throughout the 5000-year history of writing from Sumeria to the smartphone. Its starting point is the contemporary idea of ‘the death of the book’ implied by the replacement of physical books by digital media, with accompanying twenty-first-century experiences of paranoia and literary apocalypse. It traces a twin fear of omniscience and oblivion back to the origins of writing in ancient Babylon and Egypt, then forwards to the age of Google. It uncovers bibliophobia from the first Chinese emperor to Nazi Germany, alongside parallel stories of bibliomania and bibliolatry in world religions and literatures. Books imply cognitive content embodied in physical form, in which the body cooperates with the brain. At its heart this relationship of body and mind, or letter and spirit, always retains a mystery. Religions are founded on holy books, which are also sites of transgression, so that writing is simultaneously sacred and profane. In secular societies these complex feelings are transferred to concepts of ideology and toleration. In the ambiguous future of the internet, digital immateriality threatens human equilibrium once again.
Bibliophobia is a global history, covering six continents and seven religions, describing written examples from each of the last thirty centuries (and several earlier). It discusses topics such as the origins of different kinds of human script; the development of textual media such as scrolls, codices, printed books, and artificial intelligence; the collection and destruction of libraries; the use of books as holy relics, talismans, or shrines; and the place of literacy in the history of slavery, heresy, blasphemy, censorship, and persecution. It proposes a theory of writing, how it relates to speech, images, and information, or to concepts of mimesis, personhood, and politics. Originating as the Clarendon Lectures in the Faculty of English at the University of Oxford, the methods of Bibliophobia range across book history; comparative religion; philosophy from Plato to Hegel and Freud; and a range of global literature from ancient to contemporary. Richly illustrated with textual forms, material objects, and art works, its inspiration is the power that books always (and continue to) have in the emotional, spiritual, bodily, and imaginative lives of readers.
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